Practicing Gratitude
Happy Thanksgiving Weekend!
If you’ve followed me on social media or known me personally for any extended period of time, you’re fully aware how much I love Thanksgiving. From my perspective, it’s the best American holiday and ultimately the last one that has no ulterior motives attached to it. Get together with people you care about, enjoy a meal together and share things that are positive and meaningful in your life, that you are grateful for. From where I stand, it’s pretty hard to beat that.
I also understand that this has been a very difficult year for a lot of people, especially in the classic car space. However, when things get difficult, reevaluating the little things and searching for places to express gratitude can be a pretty soul cleansing experience. I’ve always felt that gratitude is a largely underappreciated and somewhat underutilized thing, so it’s something that I’m consistently trying to find ways to incorporate more thoroughly into my life.
Here’s 8 quick things that I’m grateful for in 2024:
1. Vintage Motorcycles – Towards the beginning of 2024, I found myself getting really burned out on all things collector car related. Getting more serious about my motorcycle collection and incorporating myself more into that world has really helped refresh my relationship with collector cars both personally and professionally. If you’re tired of one thing, try another. Sometimes that’s all it takes to wake you back up and once again get you loving what you originally set out to do, all over again.
2. Reengaging With Past Mentors – I definitely know a lot, but a lot of other people still know way more than me. If I’m standing next to a bridge that I don’t know how to cross, it’s worth it to ask somebody that does. Especially, if they’ve previously gone out of their way to show me where all the bridges were in the first place. Additionally, I also found that a lot of times they just want to hear from me and that’s a great thing too, that I won’t soon allow myself to forget.
3. Taking Responsibility and Cleaning Up After Yourself – I’m betting that at one point or another everyone’s been in a situation where they’ve been in such a hurry that they left the freezer door open or a half a tuna sandwich on the counter or something like that, only to come home and have it defrosting on the kitchen floor or rotting and stinking up the place. Business can be a lot like this too. Sometimes you’re so busy that you can’t even recognize the little infrastructure issues and as a result you become so nose blind that you don’t realize that the air you’ve been breathing is getting a little on the stale side. While downturns in business are not a particularly great thing, they do give you an opportunity to sniff around the house a little bit and make it more livable for everyone there.
4. The Shelby GT500, Dodge Challenger Hellcat, Camaro ZL-1 and every cool late model supercar with an ultra-high horsepower combustion engine – Yeah, I get it. Unfortunately, most of these are going to go away very soon, but the fact that they’re still here almost assuredly means that there will still be automotive enthusiasts around, who are collecting cars and remain passionate about collecting for at least the next three decades or so. Point blank, these cars are still inspiring and the kids playing with these cars on PS5 and watching videos about them on YouTube are the future. I’m very grateful that the major manufacturers have continued (or in the case of the new ZR-1 Corvette will continue) to create things that will inspire passion in these kids all the way up until pretty close to the end when everything is going to get electric and sucky.
5. Automotive Content Creators on YouTube – I don’t think we’ve ever been in a place where automotive Content Creators on YouTube are operating at a higher level. I also don’t think we’ve ever been in a position where more traditional automotive television has been habitually producing anything that is as bad as what they are puking out now. How a couple of guys with some tripods/selfie sticks and some iPhone cameras (and maybe a drone or two) can so thoroughly outdo so many experienced, highly funded, long-term legacy media professionals defies all logic, but that’s the world we live in right now. YouTube creators are consistently pushing the boundaries, wherein all the legacy guys seem to be able to do is try and copy past successes. To the YouTube guys: For that, we thank you.
6. Living in Arizona – There’s no secret that we’ve got a world-renowned collector car community here in the Phoenix area. Between Concours in the Hills, Copperstate 1000 and of course Arizona Concours d’Elegance /Arizona Car Week there’s never been a shortage of cool things to do with classic cars around here. For the last decade, I’ve definitely taken a role in as many things as I can. That’s going to expand even further soon. We’ll see if I’m still thankful for this stuff in 2025 (kidding… sort of), but as of right now, there’s exciting things coming. Stay tuned!
7. Getting Back to Basics – As a lot of you know, in addition to being a full-time car guy, I’m also a hobbyist boxer. I originally started doing it in my late ’20s in order to stay in shape for other professional activities that I had at the time, but it’s since remained something that is reasonably consistent in my life. Back in 2021, I suffered three pretty significant injuries back-to-back and as a result it was in question as to whether or not I would ever be able to put gloves back on again. Long story short, I got through physical therapy, put myself in with a new trainer and pretty quickly realized that almost all of my injuries were created by poor structural issues in my game. For the last couple of years, all we’ve worked on is retraining and fixing all of these very basic shortcomings. As a result, I’m probably a better boxer now at age 46 than I’ve likely ever been and that pretty much completely comes down to refocusing on and then fixing the fundamentals. Boxing is far from the only thing that works like this.
8. This Newsletter – When I was in my 20’s I had a bi-weekly column in the entertainment section of one of the major newspapers here in the Phoenix area. I commonly refer to that job as the worst one I’ve ever done. This, despite being approached a couple of times, had been my rationale for not writing a newsletter in the past. I didn’t want to consciously poison my life with something that may end up being similar to that. Fortunately, this experience has proven to be the complete opposite. Writing this has allowed me to further refine and analyze what I do on a weekly basis, it’s allowed me to communicate with lots of interesting people who have taught me lots of things in the process and overall, it’s made me a better, more rounded professional that can better provide for both my clients, the community and this industry overall. Big thanks to everybody that’s connected with us this year through the Z260. We’ve got some exciting new ideas coming in 2025 and we’re going to grow this as far as we can in the process. We appreciate everyone being along for the ride and being part of this community. We certainly appreciate you!
Anyway, this year, I’m fortunate enough to be able to spend Thanksgiving in the company of the people that I care about most and they remain happy, healthy and successful, so that’s definitely what I’m the most thankful for this year for sure.
Hopefully everybody had a great holiday weekend!
That’s it for this week…
Darin Roberge