Well, there’s been a lot that’s happened to me this past week.

A flood in the bathroom led to a terribly flooded closet, and I had to throw out so much stuff. You know the kind of stuff I’m talking about—things you haven’t seen in years, things you almost forgot you even had, until suddenly you’re standing there holding them again.

A lot of it was ruined.

Old video games, some of them older than me. Atari games from my youth. Old books. DVDs. VHS tapes. Childhood mementos. Pieces of my life that had somehow survived all these years, only to end up soaked and destroyed in a closet.

And while I was cleaning everything out and throwing away bags full of memories, I got to thinking about the ability to make something truly wonderful.

I often wonder what the world has in store for us. There are times when I wonder just how far I can push this programming spirit of mine. How far can I take it? What can I actually build if I keep pushing?

There are moments in my life when I honestly think we should all be working toward building a better world in whatever way we know how. For me, that has always meant creating something.

I’ve dreamed for a long time about making something that is truly my own.

I’ve never been mechanically inclined. I’m not the guy who can rebuild an engine or construct something with his hands. But programming? That’s different. Programming is something I understand.

Besides my family, it’s one of the things I’ve got.

While I was going through all this stuff, I remembered playing a game when I was younger, and for whatever reason my mind instantly went there.

Breakout.

Super Breakout, to be exact.

It sounds strange, but thinking about that game actually helped keep me from losing my mind while I was digging through everything. Finding pieces of your childhood destroyed in front of you kind of hits hard.

I’m not crying over spilled milk. Things are things.

But still.

It’s been a weird week.

I had to book time off just so I could throw out bags full of memories. That’s kind of crazy when you stop and think about it.

But maybe that’s also the point.

Maybe it isn’t as big a tragedy as it feels like in the moment. Maybe it’s simply another part of life.

A lot of things have been on my mind lately. I’ve been thinking about some of the games I used to play and some of the movies I used to watch on DVD. Stuff like Johnny Dangerously. Hell, even Sweatin’ to the Oldies Vol. 7. Random things that become attached to certain moments in your life.

And then, years later, those objects somehow become little time machines.

That’s what sucks about throwing them away.

You’re not really mourning an Atari cartridge, a VHS tape, an old DVD, or a beat-up book.

You’re mourning the version of yourself that remembers what it felt like when that thing mattered.

But I think I learned something important this week.

You really can’t take it with you.

Eventually, the games disappear. The books fall apart. The tapes stop working. The boxes get thrown away. Sometimes a flood comes along and makes the decision for you.

But the memories?

Those are different.

I can throw away the Atari games, but nobody can throw away the memory of playing them.

I can lose the movies, the books, and the old pieces of my childhood, but I don’t lose the person I was when they mattered to me.

And maybe that’s why creating things matters so much.

Maybe that programming spirit I keep talking about is my way of taking everything I loved from those years—the games, the imagination, the excitement, the weird little things that stayed with me—and turning them into something new.

Something of my own.

Because when everything else is gone, the most valuable thing we have left is our memories.