Navigare necesse est

I mentioned in an earlier blog entry that my husband loves to sail. He shares a small sailing boat with a friend of his, on top of which he belongs to a crew of another boat with which they compete in local amateur competitions. Sometimes those competitions take him away from home. Next week is one of those occasions. That means I have the place all to myself for over a week, during which time I can complete my manuscript in peace and quiet. I should be jumping to a chance to do as much work as possible, but I’m not.

I’m blaming the Olympics. Women’s marathon held my interest better than revising my text did and I followed the entire men’s ten thousand meters (it was an exciting race), not to mention all the sports I have never heard of before but find important to watch. Kayak slalom, anyone? In addition, there are all the domestic chores that I suddenly find terribly important to tackle immediately. And while I’m not into sailing like my husband is, the sea seems to be calling me as well, distracting me from what is important.

Plutarch may have held that sailing was more important than living (well, actually he held that it was more important for the merchant navy to operate than for the sailors operating it to stay alive), but I haven’t reached that stage in my career of choice yet. While writing is the most important thing in my life at the moment, I’m not single-minded about it. Perhaps I should make the effort though. A little more writing and a little less Olympics might go far, and if I haven’t managed to unbox my summer clothes by now, I might as well leave them in their boxes. Then again, summer Olympics take place only once in every four years. I can write my book when they are over.