#GETUPGETOUT
Sometimes You Just Have to Go
More than ten years ago, I started using a simple phrase: #GETUPGETOUT.
There wasn’t some complicated philosophy behind it. The idea was actually pretty simple. Get out of the house. Get off the couch. Turn off the television. Put down the phone. Stop doom scrolling long enough to remember there is an entire world happening outside the screen in front of you.
In other words, stop watching everybody else live their lives and go live yours.
Over time, #GETUPGETOUT became more than just something I would say. It became a personal reminder that life can easily become repetitive if we aren’t intentional about breaking the routine. We wake up, work, handle our responsibilities, eat dinner, watch something, scroll through our phones, go to sleep, and repeat the process tomorrow. There’s nothing necessarily wrong with routine, but somewhere along the way, routine can quietly become a rut.
Sometimes you simply have to interrupt it.
This past weekend was one of those moments.
My wife mentioned an avocado farm located about twenty minutes from where we live. I had absolutely no idea it existed. Think about that for a moment. Something interesting was sitting practically in our backyard, yet I probably would have continued driving past the general area for another ten years without knowing it was there.
So we went.
My wife, my kids, my grandson, and I spent time together exploring an avocado farm that had apparently been hiding twenty minutes away from us all this time.
Was it some extravagant vacation?
No.
Did it require months of planning?
No.
Did we need plane tickets, hotel reservations, or a complicated itinerary?
Not even close.
We simply got up and got out.
That became my latest #GETUPGETOUT moment.
And somewhere during that experience, I was reminded why I started using the phrase in the first place.
Time is our most precious commodity because it’s the one resource we continuously spend but can never earn back. We can make more money. We can replace possessions. We can reschedule meetings. We can even revisit many of the places we’ve traveled.
But we cannot recreate time.
That’s why this story isn’t really about an avocado farm.
It’s not about work.
And it’s definitely not about the guitar.
It’s about relationships.
It’s about intentionally creating opportunities to spend time with the people who matter most while we still have the opportunity to do it.
My grandson won’t always be this young. My kids won’t always have the same schedules. My wife and I won’t always be at this exact stage of our lives. Everything changes, usually much faster than we realize while we’re living through it.
That’s why the ordinary moments deserve more respect than we sometimes give them.
Years from now, we probably won’t remember every detail of that day. We may forget what time we arrived, what we talked about, or exactly what we saw.
But we’ll remember that we were together.
That’s what matters.
I’ve learned that some of life’s greatest memories aren’t created during carefully planned vacations or expensive experiences. Sometimes they happen twenty minutes from home because somebody said, “Hey, let’s go check this place out.”
That’s the beauty of #GETUPGETOUT.
It doesn’t require something extraordinary.
Take a drive somewhere you’ve never been.
Visit a local farm.
Walk through a new neighborhood.
Try a restaurant you’ve always driven past.
Take your kids or grandkids somewhere unexpected.
Call someone you haven’t seen in a while and meet for coffee.
Explore your own city like you’re visiting it for the first time.
Just go.
Because experiences become moments.
Moments become memories.
And some memories stay with us for a lifetime.
We spend enough time watching other people’s lives through our screens.
Every once in a while, put the phone down, grab the people you love, walk out the front door, and create something worth remembering.
Sometimes the best life advice really is that simple:
#GETUPGETOUT.