I was driving by the Capitol a few days ago, and that caused me to unsuccessfully try to remember the last time I had been in the building. It’s probably been more than a decade but I have no real recollection. Back In The Day, though, the Capitol was basically my office; I wrote stories in the press galleries and jogged back and forth from my apartment a few blocks away and wandered through the underground city that connects the building to nearby House and Senate offices. But I didn’t really appreciate the fact that I was among the small percentage of reporters in this country who had the privilege of covering Capitol Hill. I should have.

I remember exactly the last time I went into the White House: That was in 2000, when I was working on logistics involving a joint television/online interview on CNN with then-President Clinton. But a few years before that, the White House was once another place that I once visited nearly every day, joining the very very very tiny percentage of reporters who had a seat in the Briefing Room. On a given day, I might wind up in a staffer’s office in the West Wing, or out in the Rose Garden for one presidential event or another, or perhaps even a presidential news conference in the East Room. After a while, it all seemed like another day at the office to me.

And that’s the problem when the special becomes routine. You get tied up in the minutia of the moment and you forget to stop for a second and think to yourself, “Hey, this is really cool.” I’ve had far more than my share of those special moments in my life, to the point where I notice them more now only because they happen far less often.

My life has been a series of adventures to the point where I stupidly have felt that these experiences were normal. Example: I remember how much it temporarily bothered me last summer to not be attending the major political conventions. Now, on its face, that is silly: The vast majority of journalists will never go to a political convention and there was no work reason for me to go to the ones in 2012. But I had been to every one for the previous 20 years, and some goofy part of me apparently assumed this streak would continue unabated until I wanted it to end.

Life doesn’t work that way, though. If you’re lucky enough to catch that big wave, you ride it as long as you can, but eventually it’s going to peter out or just crash over you. Then the question is whether you can catch another one, and that always takes a combination of skill and luck.

But if you never do ride again — if your surfing days are over — you’ll still have the knowledge that you once caught that monster wave. What you do with that knowledge is up to you.

Me, I’m determined to enjoy the surfing a little more in real time, rather than in hindsight. That takes a certain awareness and concentration that I haven’t always had. But I’m working on it.