I love the winter olympics. They’re absolutely my favorite. My family and I watched the end of the women’s 3000 meter speed skating Sunday morning, and it was brilliant. It was one fantastic performance after another. The eventual winner’s performance was just start-to-finish amazing.
For my money, the summer olympics can’t hold a candle to the winter olympics. Every summer olympic sport has a winter olympic superior:
Gymnastics: Duh, figure skating. Let’s see you do that fancy stuff with knife blades attached to your feet. Now that’s a sport.
Triathalon: Um, biathlon? Yeah, we’re going to tax our bodies in crazy ways, and then we’re going to shoot guns. Deal with it.
Cycling: Long track speed skating. No dumb helmets, better crashes, and more fantastic athletes.
Swimming: Short track speed skating. Or downhill skiing. Either of those is better than watching people flop in the water.
Diving: Yeah, real fancy. Ever seen the ski jump? Way better than diving.
Basketball: Hockey. Because hockey is what basketball players wish their parents had made them play.
Canoe / Kayak / Rowing / Cycling: Skeleton, Luge, Bobsled. You want speed? You want danger? You want athletes? Try these ones. On an ice track.
Hurdles / Steeple Chase / other dumb races: Skiing, both freestyle and downhill. You’re trying to tell me that you think the hurdles is better than moguls skiing? I’m telling you, you’re crazy.
BMX: oh, okay, cool… Summer olympics trying to bring some sexy to the olympics. Is that right? Boom. Snowboarding. Slopestyle. Half pipe. Snowboard cross.
And the trump card: there isn’t a summer olympic sport that comes close to the majesty, the strategy, the brains required to master curling. Give’r! Sweep! HARD!
Archives for February 2014
Whew… robbing Peter to pay Paul
So, thus far on this adventure in hustle, I’m hitting my goals:
But, it does feel like I’m robbing Peter to pay Paul. I’m doing great, churning out 500-600 words a day on my work in progress. But, I’m blogging sporadically. I’m not hitting my goals for some other writing I’m doing over at BelieversPress.
It’s hard — sometimes it feels like it’s nigh-impossible — to get all my tires spinning at the same time. I’m sure it’s possible. And I see little gains here and there. Hoping for some big gains before long, but I’m starting to realize that maybe it’s more like weight loss. You can’t game it, you just have to gut it out and do the hard work.
Chocolate bars
Are amazing things. Seriously. I ate a coffee crisp tonight. Thanks mom and dad!
They say…
They say you should make your goals public in order to get reinforcement from the people who love you. Those of you who are here (all 10 of you) probably love me, so here’s the thing:
In the month of February, I’m doing a thing called the 30 days of hustle. It’s a Jon Acuff thing. I’m using it to try to finish the first draft of the novel I’ve been working on for 4 years. I often reset myself to finish it, and then give up after a couple of days. This month, no longer. Here’s my progress tracker. Check in on it, please. Ask me how I’m doing. I’m going to finish this thing this month.
Reinvent the Wheel (don't… or do)
Interestingly, many productivity discoveries being made by my generation right now are simply relearning old lessons, ones our grandparents and parents had locked down.
This seems to make sense — generation Y has an obsession with making things our own. It’d be easier if we’d just learn it from our elders… but I guess if you’ve got to think you’re reinventing the wheel to succeed, maybe that isn’t the worst thing.