Accomplishments (and not so much)

I'm closing out a week without kids. Well, five days, really, but still...the boys are at camp, sleeping in cabins and swimming in a lake and running around being silly, loud little boys the way little boys used to be before we all got tethered to televisions. They are most likely having the best. time. ever. They will come home a dirty, bug-bitten, tired mess. I will smother them with kisses anyway.

I accomplished nothing this week. Good thing my only goal was not to cook (check!). I didn't even buy groceries.

When I wasn't working or spending too much money eating out, I was watching the Olympics. I would have watched more, but I knew I'd regret sitting at home watching TV all week when I could be out playing.

Just another day at the office...

But when I do watch, I am of course awed and inspired (inspired to do what? I don't know), but what I think is, "Wow, there are people rowing kayaks/running the track/flipping through the air/etc. right now and that activity has been their singular focus for the last several months/years." It seems both amazing and crazy.

If you devote your life to, say, table tennis and then you DON'T become an Olympic athlete, have you wasted a large portion of your life on a useless skill, or is it still rewarding somehow? I'm not making a judgement, I'm just wondering. It seems risky.

I'm actually watching the kayaking right now and thinking how great it must be to spend your days outside on the water. I mean, I'm sure they do other exercise, too, but to have your "job" essentially be to get out and row a kayak as fast as you can is just so drastically different from my life that I like to try to imagine it. Sort of like joining the circus...I don't really want to, but it's a fun thing to imagine.