Last night I came home from a weekend away celebrating my birthday!  We went to Las Vegas to take in a couple of shows and to stop in at the Winning the Real Estate Game bootcamp.  It was great seeing my good friend Tom Kish again and being in an environment of eager REI learners.

My husband and I saw Cirque du Soleil’s O at the Bellagio and Celine Dion’s A New Day concert.  This was my fourth Cirque and if you ever have the chance, I highly recommend any of their shows.  They are incredible!

Being in Vegas this time was such a dichotomy for me.  The best and the worst.  What I want to be and what I don’t want to be.  Where I came from and where I’m going.  All of my prior trips to Vegas have been for business.  This time it was mostly pleasure and being that it was my birthday, it was an opportune time to look around, think, reflect, and plan.  Another year… where am I at now?

There is so much intensity and passion in Vegas.  As I watched the performers at the Cirque, I see individuals living their dream at the prime of their athletic lives.  They are the best of the best.  Celine Dion is first class all the way, and makes her extreme talent appear effortless.  Again, the best of the best.  These artists are doing exactly what they dream to do and have fine tuned their performances to perfection.  The crowds roar with appreciation for what they’ve chosen to do with their lives.

On our walk to and from these shows, we couldn’t help but notice the hope and hopelessness of those so drunk they can hardly stand with no one there to hold them up, and those who feed coin after coin into the slot machine, waiting for that lucky day to come.  Some are waiting for something to happen, some are bummed that nothing is happening, and some are making it happen.

I recalled the times I was in Vegas with one of my former coworkers in corporate America.  I rolled the dice for him at the craps table as he won and lost.  His shirt pocket was packed full of $1 bills that he would tip out everytime a waitress would come by.  I held his place in the taxi line as he quick ran into the boutique to buy a Rolex when no one was looking.  My friend later died of “extreme living” at the age of 33.

My cellphone rang on Sunday night and it was my dad.  He was actually calling for my husband and was complaining that he was not answering his cellphone.  My dad wanted to tell him that his brother heard a media report about home values in Arizona going down and that’s it’s bad to be investing right now.  My dad doesn’t acknowledge that I study real estate markets and that my husband and I invest as an educated team.  When I told my dad we were in Vegas about to go into our show his response was ”What are you doing in Vegas???” followed up by “Are you staying at a hotel that has gambling?” and “How much are you paying for your hotel room?”  He had forgotten it was my birthday but reminded me how I came to be at that place in that exact moment.  It was a choice I made the day I turned 18.