Beaten Path

My weekends go by too fast these days. There's a line connecting Friday evening to Monday morning. It feels slack and loose for about an hour, and then suddenly I've pulled it tight and run smack into the week without even knowing it.

I had a bit of an abbreviated workday on Friday and took the boys to a local park in the afternoon that has a small walking trail. The summit of the small hill provides a breathtaking view of the The Olive Garden and Marshall's, our finest local merchants, so it's really not to be missed. We wandered up the trail together, meandering and poking trees with our sticks and I'm sure we cut quite a figure: two tow-headed rug rats bursting with energy trailed by a sweaty fat 35 year old in King Size Dockers, clutching a diaper bag and a Diet Coke.

But we had a nice little adventure in our way, and it felt good to get the blood flowing a bit and look at things from a slightly different angle. At the end of the walk i thought: I can do this, I can be a normal guy who goes on walks with his kids and points out the different kinds of trees, I can sit on a bench at the end of the trail and breathe in deeply and watch my kids on the playground and take in the moment. I need to remember that I can do this, that these simple moments are constantly available to me and are worth seeking out. The way to slow the weekend down is to slow myself down, and sitting here on Saturday morning I vow to give it my best shot for the next 48 hours.