Years from now, when you look back at what you’ve done in your career, what will you value the most? The friendships, accomplishments, and growth, of course. But sometimes it’s the little things that carry the most weight.

Such as the time, back in my trade-journalist days, when I was walking off the show floor at the big home-video convention and happened upon one of my creative heroes. He was sitting by himself in a small, out-of-the-way booth at the edge of things—just him and a stack of comics to sign next to a taped-up piece of paper with marker scrawl on it that said: “Today only! Stan Lee!”

I was scandalized that nobody else was there (this was during Marvel’s lean years and way before the movies got going). I told him what a fan I was and asked him to sign a Hulk comic.

At that time, nobody foresaw the IP empire that would be built from the brilliance of the Marvel crew over the years. And if Stan Lee were alive today, he’d be in one of the biggest booths, with a crowd of people queued up to meet him.

So it’s something to keep in mind: do your best work, the work that inspires you. Because you never know what it might become a long way down the road.

And treat your memories, souvenirs, and keepsakes right. You won’t believe how happy you’ll be to dig them out of a banged-up cardboard box one day in the future.

It’s 82 degrees outside, and we work with the windows open. It’s supposed to go back down into the 40s in a couple of days, but for now, it’s shorts weather.

And mask weather. But it was already that, no matter the temperature. Most people walking past wear everything from kerchiefs to surgical masks. Some are clearly homemade offerings, which earn extra respect from me. One guy, strolling with his wife and little girl, looks like an Old West train robber. Another looks like Bane.

We leave to get steps. In front of the building next door, somebody’s done up the sidewalk with a chalk activity walk. We’re supposed to follow a snaky line, skip, hop like a bunny, and take advantage of safe spots to avoid falling into lava.

We greatly appreciate the effort but cross through at a normal walk, as if none of it is there. We like when others get creative; we just usually refrain from participating. In that way, nothing’s really changed.

At the end of the day, a couple in the building across the street play a duet out their window, serenading two friends who stand on the sidewalk with their dog. It’s a perfectly respectable rendition of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads.” I can’t see them clearly through the combo of our screen and theirs, but from the sound of it, I think the woman’s playing a ukulele. And her harmony is pretty damn good. After the friends move on, she starts into R.E.M.’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine),” but her heart isn’t in it, so she fades to a stop. Or maybe it’s just that it hits too close to home.

More people pass the window. I find myself thinking of the Gena Rowlands line from A Woman Under the Influence: “All of a sudden I miss everyone; I don’t know why.”

Only I do know why.

And I want them all to make it.