Accomplishment

There are varying levels of what constitutes an actual accomplishment.

Becoming a runner is an accomplishment in itself. Running a marathon is a huge accomplishment. Completing 50 of them will (hopefully) be an incredible one.

But it's the day-to-day accomplishments that make up the most wonderful moments of life. If you're only living for the big, end-of-a-journey successes that come after months of work and agony, then you'll end up spending an alarming amount of your life in searching, and very little of it in actual enjoyment. For the meaning of happiness, you have to look at the smaller things.

Today, since I was not scheduled to run, my victories came from other parts of my life. I briefly considered doing 6 miles to make up for the miles that I did not complete yesterday, but I immediately dismissed this idea. My disaster yesterday was due to either the extreme heat (in which case I did the smart thing by stopping and should be rewarded with rest), or general exhaustion (in which case my best solution is to rest). Either way, today's rest was going to be important, and for more than one reason.

After my show last night, I stayed for a short while to spend some time with the cast before heading home at around 12:30, at which point I got myself some food and set up shop in front of the television for a video game session, something I almost never do. I played for a couple hours before bed, entirely because I knew that I didn't have to get up early the next morning, which is a very rare occurrence. I turned off my alarm and let nature wake me up. At almost 11:00am. It was magical.

That was victory number one.

The other great thing about today is that my dad is in town to see my show and visit us. This meant that I had to clean the apartment, and I mean seriously. I put on some music and went through the place systematically, room by room, until it was almost as clean as when we moved in. I've written before about the empowerment behind doing something as simple as cleaning, and it's still true. Watching the place transform before my eyes, I had an incredible moment of happiness. Even though I'd slept in as late as I wanted, I still got something very productive completed.

That's a great accomplishment.