Priorities

Stillwater Park Playground, Bangor

This post was originally published May 24, 2018.

No matter what circumstances we are born or stumble into, we will always have our time, our energy, and our attention. I’m slowly learning to take ownership of these things. Sure, work can take up our time, if we choose to be working. Tasks can drain our energy, if we choose to be doing them. People can capture our attention, if we choose to engage with them.

But fundamentally, my time is mine, my energy is mine, and my attention is mine to give away.

I have been trying to decide the best way to spend these things. Ideally, it should be a reflection of my values. Things like my health, my writing, and my relationships. My priorities should be taking up most of my time, energy, and attention, but lately, they have not.

Graduating college is a difficult thing. I’m not talking about the college part, though that certainly has its struggles. I’m talking about everything that comes after. There’s an expectancy that we will graduate and then be starting our careers, buying homes, and building families. All these are goal posts in our lives, but the path to them is blurry at best.

So I think about my priorities and try to let them guide me. Priorities like getting published, exercising more, spending more time with people I care about, and then, the priority that has been consuming me: decreasing my debt.

Perhaps one of the only things I know a lot about, with more credit to my parents than anyone else, is how to budget my money. Here’s the funny thing though. I don’t value money like I value my health, writing, and relationships. When I started working two jobs months ago, working overtime every week, I thought of it as an investment in my future self. The future self who has so much money (compared to current me I guess?) that she can just not worry about it anymore, but current me was being neglected. My health was struggling, my relationships were suffering, and my writing was not getting the love and attention it deserved. For all the time I spent trying to be wise about my money, I wasn’t being wise about my time. I wasn’t balancing my priorities like I was balancing my expenses.

I changed some things. Made them balance a little better, and I’m trying to embrace patience because even though I want my own career, home, and family, I have a whole lifetime to get them. And more importantly, the time spent working towards these things should not leave me feeling unfulfilled.

The Minimalists have been a strong influence in my life lately and have inspired me to reassess my time and priorities. You can read their piece on priorities here.