I went somewhere and didn't take a picture

This past weekend I had the opportunity to partake in one of my all-time favorite summer-in-NYC activities: walking over the Brooklyn Bridge.

The Brooklyn Bridge is awesome! It's the perfect Goldilocks-approved distance - not too long, not too short. It's pretty. It has nice views. It takes you from Brooklyn to Manhattan. And vice versa! I love it, especially when the weather is nice, and I will go out of my way to walk over it if I have the time.

When I walked over the bridge on Sunday it was particularly hot out, and I was running particularly ahead of schedule, so when I got to one of the nice shady pylon areas, I stopped. I leaned against the railing and I watched the traffic and stared at lower Manhattan while enjoying the breeze.

All around me, people took pictures. Of Brooklyn. Of Manhattan. Of the bridge. Of the water. Of the ferries. Of each other.

I did not take any pictures.

I didn't take any pictures because I didn't feel like rifling through my purse for my phone. I was also just enjoying the fact that I was doing nothing, standing there listening to my new obsession, The Floozies, and looking at stuff.

Even when I saw this cool Tetris-y building, which I swear I had somehow never seen (though how could I have missed it all these years?), I didn't take a picture.

(I'm thinking that perhaps I hallucinated this building because I cannot for the life of me find a picture of it but I assure you, it's a white building with geometric lines drawn on it and I AM NOT MAKING THIS UP).

I'm certainly not the first to say this and I know I won't be the last, but it is utterly insane how obligated we feel to document Every. Little. Thing. As if people, landscapes, experiences, and life itself cease to exist if we don't Kodak the shit out of the moment. So even though I am totally guilty of taking pictures all the time, and even though I was standing on the bridge thinking about how I wasn't taking any pictures and is thinking about not taking pictures really any better than just taking a damn picture already, I somehow feel a little better about not taking a photo.

After all, how many times have you looked back on a picture you've taken - of a touristy site, a sunset, or something else that you thought was so beautiful or majestic - and thought, "Wow, this picture really captures what I was looking at!"

I take pretty bad pictures, so for me, this is almost never. The photos I take on my phone never do the real thing justice. I've also realized that when I stop what I'm doing to try and document it, I inevitably stop paying attention to the thing I'm watching and only pay attention to what my phone is doing. Which is stupid. And silly.

I'm not really sure what the point is here. Will I never take photos from the Brooklyn Bridge ever again? I doubt it. Will I try to document my life less often? Maybe, but I might not succeed and I won't make any promises about how hard I'm even willing to try.

But can I at least acknowledge that sometimes, enjoying some good tunes and a good breeze and some pretty sights is just as valuable an experience even without photographic proof that it ever happened?

Hell yes.