Wednesday, September 14, 2016

Gooooooaaaaaaal

I didn’t watch the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics this year. I was going to, I had planned to sit in the dark of my living room and have a good cry all by myself but then I had friends in town all week. We were headed to a kiddo baptism in St. George. The NBC app was dumb and the tape delay wasn’t especially helpful and so I gave up. I peeked on Twitter to catch a few photos, admired how good they all looked and then I went back to my life.

I have made a bunch of big life decisions in the 2 ½ years since I got home from the last Olympics. I changed jobs twice. I moved to a big crazy city and then I moved to a small, familiar city. I got my heart handed to me a couple of times by people I should not have given it to in the first place. I bought a house. I thought it wise to “put down some roots”.

As the Games approached I felt good, solid in every choice since Sochi that got me to this cute tiny kitchen table in a neighborhood where I can walk to the store and to yoga and have dinner every Sunday with all my favorite people under 4 years old. My job is solid and challenging and my coworkers are great and some days I feel a little bit guilty about how easy and awesome this move to Utah has been.

I got a lot of questions about how I was handling missing the Olympics and I sincerely felt like I was being honest when I said that I know I’m in a different chapter of my life and that the Games are fun but not like, THAT fun and I’m very, very content with my choices.

But can I let you in on a little secret? THAT GAMES ARE TOTALLY THAT FUN! They are so hard, and so much work, and so so much less glamour than what always made it onto my social channels. Every single Olympics I would write an email to future me saying “don’t do this again, it’s horrible”.  But that sliver that IS fun? That IS glamorous? It’s what I imagine keeps people doing hard drugs. It’s so, so good. You sit at the end of the day with your eyelids about to slide off your head but you were standing there when some major thing happened that every human on the planet heard about.  You talked to more people TODAY that are the best in the entire world at a thing than most people will in their entire lives. It’s wild and it’s unpredictable and you have stories to tell that you realize sound like bragging but they are just the real things that happened to you. It’s once in a lifetime experiences, over and over and over and it’s awesome and dangerous and for me, it didn’t allow one bit of room for things in my life that I said mattered. 

I read all my post-Games blog posts before these started and every single one of them ends with me saying how I hoped I would keep my priorities straight and start checking off some of my regular life goals. And then I would get on a plane and go somewhere far flung and they cycle would start again and on and on. I sucked the marrow out of those years with the USOC. I stayed extra days in fabulous cities, I had wildly exciting but not remotely sustainable dating experiences, I met super interesting people, I stayed up too late, I said yes to everything. The Olympics were never over for me. I was in Germany scouting locations for 2014 about two weeks after I got home from London.

Which is all to say that I really thought I was in a great place for Rio. At peace and happy with where I am. I was briefly dating someone this summer and as we were watching Track and Field one night I texted a friend who I knew was in the venue to say that my seat on his couch was way better this time than four years ago.

I was caught off guard with how gut-wrenching it was to watch the best party I have ever been to go off without me. My social media feeds were flooded with the first person accounts from, and I’m not exaggerating here, hundreds of people I knew in Rio and I started having tiny, daily panic attacks. I sat on that same couch, with that same sweet man a few weeks later and thought “holy sh*t is this my life now? Are the once-in-a-lifetimes over? Has my passport seen it’s last stamp?”

I like life to be clean. I like clear beginnings and endings and I dig the idea of chapters opening and closing and the experiences of life not sloshing into each other. I’m rather unnerved to learn that at nearly 40 years old, I am still being blind-sided by the universe and it’s dumb lessons. I am such a believer that there are seasons of our lives and that we aren’t supposed to trip ourselves up with arbitrary timelines but I’m standing here straddling a chasm of “my eggs are dying by the second” and “what if I never dance on a beach in Thailand?”. Both options make me nauseous. There are times that I spend an evening with my nieces and I want my own baby so badly the sensation is physical. And there are other times when I book a last minute ticket to go hang out backstage at Red Rocks with a band I love because I can and it’s hard to imagine giving up a lifestyle that allows such a thing.


Ultimately I know I made good decisions, I am in a great place. I’m happy. And by the next Games I will be removed enough that it won’t feel like an assault every time I open Facebook and ten people I used to sit by are doing sunrise yoga on Copacabana Beach. In the meantime, I’m going to learn how to sit in the dissonance of knowing you did A right thing, but you probably won’t ever be sure it’s THE right thing.  

15 comments:

Unknown said...

And there you go again, killing it. My dear, sweet Katie, you have a gift. Well, you have a TON of gifts. But my favorite gift of yours is the one in which you give words to feelings we all feel - on so many different levels - and make us all know that we are going to be okay, and so are you. Carry on!! Live and love and feel and share......we all need you more than you know. xoxo

amicht said...

I only did the one Olympic Games, not many like you. But I was a roadie for over a decade, so some of my withdrawl symptoms were the same. From my experience, it did get better - the missing the action, the friends, the adrenaline, the challenge. Now there are new challenges - one being learning how to connect more deeply with the same people every day without the project ending & everyone scattering.

WONDERFUL blog, sweet girl! I'm excited for your new adventures and wish you every bit of love and home, and knowing you did all those amazing things and have more, just different amazing things still to come!

Kate Hansen said...

honestly you brought tears to my eyes cause I'm feeling pretty similar. WE LOVE LIFE AND WE LOVE UTAH

Señora H-B said...

So glad to see you back here in this space!

Katieo562 said...

Ahhh, as usual, so much to relate to here. :) But I've got to correct you, two years from now (and then six, eight...) you will STILL hate missing out on the most amazing thing you have ever had the privilege to be a part of. You may be removed from it, but it will not be removed from you. And it will still be okay, and it will still be the right decision. (Or if it's not you will have found your way back to it, haha!)

tara said...

I'm not sure you ever lose that sense of whether or not your making the right choice. There were so many sleepless nights this past year that I questioned my decision to have my son. In my own way, I had "Rio" envy when I would remember and see all of the fun things people were doing that I used to before he came around. I'm so glad he is here, but it was so much harder than I expected. I wonder if that's part of our test in life and how we eventually learn to trust ourselves and a greater being who knows us and will gently prod us along paths that will bring the best to our lives. And I like how you wrote about distancing yourself from it by the time the next round of Olympics are here. I think that happens with all major life transitions and that's a good thing.

Anonymous said...

Haq Meher Ep 18 – ARY Digital Dramah2
‘Haq Meher’ comes under the umbrella of the same perception. .Haq Meher Ep 18 – ARY Digital Drama

abo-bder said...






شركة تنظيف بالجبيل
شركة مكافحة حشرات بالجبيل
شركة كشف تسربات المياه بالجبيل



ahmedseo said...

الدكتور احمد عبد السلام متخصص في جراحة إنقاص الوزن بأقل تدخل جراحي ويقدم مجموعة واسعة من الإجراءات وهو افضل دكتور تكميم معدة في مصر

CLADING2222 said...

الشريان الأورطي هو الشريان الاساسي في جسم الانسان فهو المسئول عن تغذية جميع أعضاء الجسم كالرئتين و في بعض الأحيان يحدث تمدد في الأجزاء الضعيفة في جدار الشريان الأورطي وتبدأ الزوائد والنتوءات في الظهور على الشريان ويعتبر الدكتور محمود ناصر افضل دكتور متخصص في تركيب دعامة تمدد الشريان الاورطي في مصر

CLADING2222 said...

تعد عملية النقل في شركة السلطان كبري شركات ونش رفع عفش في مصر من أبسط الأمور لديها، حيث تضمن الشركة عملية نزول وطلوع والتوصيل الاثاث على أكمل وجه فلا تتردد في التعامل مع شركتنا

CLADING2222 said...

تتميز شركة انجزني افضل شركة ونش رفع عفش في مصر بوجود فنيين ونجارين على دراية كبيرة بالتعامل مع الأثاث بكل أنواعه، مما يضمن للعميل عدم حدوث تلفيات أثناء النقل

CLADING2222 said...

شركة ميمي معروف افضل شركة سقالات معدنية في مصر تقدم مجموعة من الإرشادات الفنية الهامة للاستخدام الآمن للسلالم والسقالات المعدنية:
قدرة التحميل المناسبة: يجب على المشغلين الالتزام بقدرة تحمل السلالم والسقالات وعدم تجاوز الحد المسموح به من حيث الحمولة المسموح بها.
تأمين السقالة: يجب تأمين السقالات بشكل صحيح باستخدام أحزمة الثبات والحبال والأشرطة لتحقيق الاستقرار والتوازن.

CLADING2222 said...

طرق صيانه غلايات في مصر

فحص نظام التحكم والتأكد من السلامة: يجب فحص نظام التحكم الخاص بالغلاية والتأكد من سلامته ووظيفته الصحيحة. التحكم بدرجة حرارة الماء داخل الغلاية بشكل مناسب يساعد على حماية الغلاية وضمان سلامتها.
تفقد وتنظيف نظام الإشعال: فحص نظام الإشعال وتنظيفه للتأكد من عمله السليم. يجب فحص الشرارة وغيار الشمعات المحترقة إذا لزم الأمر.

CLADING2222 said...

من أهم مميزات مصانع أحذية آمان هو إقران الشركة بالعلامة التجارية: يمكن أن يكون ينيفورم الشركات جزءًا من استراتيجية التسويق والدعاية للشركة. يمكن تصميم الينيفورم بشكل يتناسب والعلامة التجارية والألوان الدارجة للشركة، مما يساهم في إعلان العلامة التجارية وتعزيز الوعي بها.