Tag: Megalomania

Setting the Vibe for the Year

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I have developed an odd New Year habit.

Even though I usually don’t leave my house for New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day, I still put a lot of thought and effort into the outfits that I wear. I want to close out the old year and begin the new one with the right vibe and I do that through my fashion choices.

I can’t remember when I started doing this. Probably around the time I decided it was my New Year’s Eve duty to drink an entire bottle of champagne and toast the New Year appropriately. I can’t remember exactly why I started doing this either. I think I decided that staying home didn’t mean that I couldn’t have fun and dress up. I decided to use it as an excuse to wear outfits I didn’t think I could get away with wearing on an average Tuesday afternoon.

At some point, it morphed into a way to set the vibe for the New Year and it’s become an important part of my celebration. The outfits I choose tend to be funky and a little sexy. They’re fun and colorful and sometimes a little extra. Not at all practical for a night in or a morning after. But that’s kind of the point. It’s a celebration. It’s supposed to be fancy. Just because I’m not out in the streets doesn’t change that. I don’t dress for other people anyway. I dress for me. And when it comes to New Year’s, those outfits set the tone of my year. At least, that’s the intention.

So, when I got Covid this past Christmas, it put my vibe-setting ritual into jeopardy.

The household had done pretty well when it came to avoiding it, but our luck ran out when my roommate brought it home the week before Christmas. She tested positive that Tuesday night and my dad tested positive on Thursday evening. Even with masking and a constant fog of Lysol and hiding in my room as much as possible, I couldn’t hold it off forever, but it did at least take a week to get me. I tested positive on Christmas morning. Ho ho ho.

We were fortunate to get a mild version, my roommate getting it a little worse than the rest of us, my dad faring the best. For me it was like a bad cold. However, I haven’t been sick since before Covid became a thing, so I was way out of practice. It knocked me on my ass for a couple of days. I had a weird sore throat that was almost like an afterthought, spent a couple of days sounding like I was doing an Ursula the Sea Witch impersonation (not a bad thing), and I generated so much mucus I could have skated across the country on my face like a slug. But with a lot of naps, cough drops, and some Puffs with lotion, I bounced back. By Saturday I was feeling well enough to trade my pajamas for lounge clothes. But I wasn’t quite well enough for my New Year’s Eve/Day splendor.

So, instead of closing out 2023 and starting 2024 in some funky threads, I opted for cute and comfy. And a little funky.

That’s a good vibe for 2024, too.

I Impressed Myself This Year

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I know what you’re thinking. You read the title of this post and you thought to yourself (or maybe said out loud as you laughed), “That’s not hard to do!” And for what it’s worth, you’re right. I’m easily impressed. Blame it on the fact that I have somehow managed to retain some childlike wonder, even about the most mundane things like making little changes in my life and the little world that I occupy.

I go into every new year wanting to make changes, wanting things in my little sphere to be different, improved. And usually, I get to the end of that year and nothing has been significantly affected. I have spent years doing this, just being straight up stuck. Its frustrating. I feel like I’m flailing in quicksand and just sinking lower and lower. I acknowledge that much of this is my own fault and the fault of my bad life choice making skills (I also acknowledge the role played by living in a capitalistic society that has a fetish for poverty, bootstraps, and monetizing every aspect of life, but we’re going to focus on me today). Keep doing what you did, you keep getting what you got, right?

This year I chose to do different, so I got different.

Most of these changes were not actually big changes or big decisions and many of them came in the latter part of the year. I sort of think of my Charleston trip as a big turning point in 2023. There’s what I was doing and how I was feeling before Charleston and what I was doing and how I was feeling afterward.

To be honest, I really impressed myself with Charleston. I couldn’t believe I actually did it. Not the actual going on the trip, but the deciding to go on the trip. I’m notorious for wanting to do things, but then putting them off or justifying not doing them. However, my limit had been reached and I was in the mood to do something drastic.

By the time I got on that plane to South Carolina, I was burnt the fuck out. I had a lot of projects going at the end of 2022 and the first part of 2023. Things at the library were hard. Thanks to staff changes, I spent most of the year training new people and working short-handed (that particular shitshow is still ongoing). It felt like I spent most of my time barely achieving the bare minimum of what I needed to get done with no energy for anything else. I was fed the fuck up.

The time away from everything, the physical distance from it, allowed me to gain some new perspective as well as a much needed break. I came home in a better mood and with some baby steps to help me improve my current existence. The real difference this time was that unlike my previous attempts, I actually did the baby steps. I didn’t immediately sink back into the mire of my usual routine. I came up with the plan and then executed said plan. Granted, the plan wasn’t any elaborate scheme, but the fact that I did it -and am still doing it- is progress that I haven’t seen in a long time.

And so far those baby steps have had the desired impact. I’m seeing little improvements. I adjusted my priorities and changed up my schedule and made efforts in certain areas of my life that I wish to improve. Seeing the results of those little changes has encouraged me to keep taking those baby steps.

This sort of thing has a cumulative effect.

By the end of 2024, there’s a good chance I’ll be really impressed.

A Grinchmas Story

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

I’ve probably told this story already on the blog, but I’m too lazy to look it up and besides, who doesn’t like frequently re-told tales? For us old folks, that’s all we got.

Anyway, when I was in my single digits, I shared a room with my younger sister and we had bunk beds. These were not your standard, store-bought bunk beds. My grandfather made us these bunk beds. They were wooden with cubbies built into the head and foot boards for our stuff. They also had larger cubbies on the each end of the bunk bed, which we used as a bookshelf on one end and I think Barbie and My Little Pony storage on the other, if memory serves (and it frequently doesn’t). I had the top bunk and my sister had the bottom.

At Christmastime, my mother would go full ham on the decorations in the house. We rarely put up anything outside, but inside there was Christmas shit everywhere. My mother had a Christmas village that she’d set up on a table. A papermache angel that she’d made in high school would sit in the middle of it (if you even thought about touching it, Santa would give you more than just coal in your stocking). She had crocheted Santa Claus doorknob covers that made it impossible to open doors and the Christmas countdown chain and/or the cotton ball Santa beard countdown among the other decorations we’d bring home from school.

And of course we had a tree. Some years it was in the living room foyer, crowding the front door, which made us grateful we only used it to get the mail. Other years, it’d be put in the dining room near the windows, right next to the bedroom my sister and I shared. I liked those years best because I could fall asleep with the glow of the Christmas tree leaking into our room.

Decorating the tree was a big deal. Like many people, we had a collection of ornaments of sentimental value that always made it onto the tree. I made a Rudolph tree topper in 2nd grade that topped the tree for years. My grandmother had made everyone their own wooden ornaments of various figures, painting them and putting our names on them. Most of them have been lost to time, but I remember I was a rabbit and my sister was a deer. The only ones I still have are my grandpa’s –a drum major- and my grandma’s –a drum. I don’t have a big tree anymore, but I still hang those two ornaments up every year.

My favorite thing, however, was my stocking, which along with my sister’s, was hung on the end of the bunk bed with care.

Over the years, I had a few different stockings, but my favorite was, of course, one that my grandma made. My sister got one, too. For years everything we had was matchy-matchy, but in different colors. Both of our stockings were crocheted with little stuffed snowmen that fit in the top. Mine is green; my sister’s is red.

When Santa still stopped by our house (the presents Santa left under the tree were always the ones my mother didn’t want to wrap), my sister and I would know that he’d been there because after he’d fill our stockings, he’d put our snowmen in bed with us. Of all of my childhood Christmas memories, that’s my favorite. Waking up incredibly early against my will -thanks, Lulu- to find my snowman next to me. My sister and I would then empty our stockings and check out what Santa had brought us before moving on to finding what Santa had left under the tree.

Honestly, it was a brilliant move by mother. The snowman signal allowed us to raid our stockings and bought her a little more time to sleep (our dad worked nights at the time, so he usually got home around the same time we woke up our mother to officially start Christmas). It also created some extra special holiday magic that I still think about to this day.

Fortunately, I found our old stockings years ago and I sent my sister’s to her. I hang up mine every year on my bedroom door. I’ve had to sew up some holes and sew Frosty’s eye back on, but it’s otherwise in pretty good shape.

Santa doesn’t stop by my house anymore, so I don’t wake up to find Frosty in bed with me on Christmas morning, but that stocking still has some magic left to it.

It’s filled with Christmas memories.

An Apology to Everyone Who Has Ever Encountered Me in the Wild

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

If you have ever come across me in public and thought I acted a little (or a lot) weird, I apologize. It’s not you. It’s me. It’s definitely me.

I wasn’t prepared to see you.

Yes, despite living in a small town, I expect to move through public spaces without seeing anyone I know out of the context I’m used to interacting with them in. Sure we went to school together and we’ve been Facebook friends for years, but I don’t expect you to know me, recognize me, or talk to me. This isn’t to say that you shouldn’t. It’s just that I don’t expect you to.

And because I was caught off guard by this clearly unusual occurrence of people who know me actually knowing and acknowledging me, I am fully unprepared for the ensuing social interaction. What follows is several agonizing minutes of small talk that I didn’t study for while my brain screams at me to just be cool, man! The end result is me being painfully awkward and ruining the entire interaction, at least in my mind.

I have had smoother conversations with cops who have pulled me over at one in the morning for speeding. Very unattractive considering as a rule I shouldn’t be talking to cops.

My brain truly short circuits during these interactions. It’s particularly bad if it’s someone I primarily interact with online. We’ve already covered how I struggle with my own object permanence. If I don’t expect people to think about me, I definitely don’t think they remember me or would recognize me out of my own context in their existence. It never fails to shock me when someone knows who I am. And then they try to interact with me and it all goes to hell.

It’s funny how this happens. You would think that someone who works in customer service would be able to function in these situations. After all, I’m making small talk with strangers about their gut flora and peripheral vision on a regular basis (people really will talk to you about anything), so you would think I’d be able to do it relatively easily with people I actually know in some fashion. But no! Not my brain configuration.

I don’t know if the people I’m conversing with are feeling as awkward as I am, not because their brains are plagued with bad wiring, but because my awkwardness is so palpable they can’t help but catch it. It’s none of my business if they think I’m weird and incapable of simple conversation, but I’m pretty sure they think I’m weird and incapable of simple conversation.

And for that, I apologize. It is never my intention to inflict my awkwardness on others. I want to assure you that if we have ever met unexpectedly in the meatsphere (or if we ever happen to cross paths in the future), my behavior has nothing to do with you. You are fine, I’m sure. You’ve done nothing to warrant my terrible small talk.

I just come by weird more naturally than anything else.

Tales of Black Friday

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Despite working multiple Black Fridays in my retail life, I don’t actually have that many wild and crazy Black Friday stories. I mean I was still working fast food when when one of my friends and future coworkers got punched by a customer over a Furby and my sister witnessed three customers wipe out and eat shit running to get a Tick-Me-Elmo.

My first Black Friday, I was a cashier, literally trapped at my register by mobs of people in our little six lane Walmart scoring their deals, carts absolutely full of Christmas gifts. This was back when the store still had lay-a-way, too. There was only one lay-a-way computer at the customer service desk. That line was unhinged, competing with the two other lines at the desk. Sporting goods, electronics, and jewelry all had their registers open and running, too. It was stressful madness. All hands on deck. We absolutely were not paid enough to deal with that chaos.

The next Black Friday, I was a department manager in charge of automotive and sporting goods. One of my besties at the time was in charge of seasonal, which meant lawn and garden in the spring and summer, and Halloween and Christmas in the fall and winter. Our departments were next to the five aisles that made up our small Walmart’s toy department. This gave us front row seats to the two middle aged women who nearly came to blows over a Razor scooter. I had to be at work at 4 in the morning for this.

My last few Walmart Black Fridays were spent in the jewelry department. This was my last go-round and by this point I was a rodeo champ. I didn’t have to be in first thing (which was 3 AM one year) and I sure as shit wasn’t going to volunteer for it. I was good enough to do a 7 AM shift one year, but then 11 AM shifts after that. By that point, the madness was long over and the rest of the day was pretty easy.

I kept this practice up when I worked at The Limited in the mall. I was on the floorset team, working after hours to switch out merchandise and displays. Sometimes we’d only go in twice a month, but when it came to the holidays, we could be there every week. And we were required to work Black Friday even though most of us never worked when the store was open. My first year, I signed up for a four hour mid-shift and ended up spending the whole time folding clothes after people had gone through them. So many people didn’t even have the decency to even try to fold things again. They’d just hold it up, look at it, and toss it back on the table. It was the pricey clothing store equivalent of trashing a toy display to get the one they wanted. Utterly manner-less.

In my four years at The Limited, I only worked one other Black Friday, a mid-shift as usual, and it was pretty not busy. I spent most of my time walking around trying to look busy rather than actually being busy. The other two Black Friday shifts? I was called the morning of and told not to come in because they didn’t need me. I was very content to not be needed

I’ve never shopped on a Black Friday, not after working them. The idea of willingly jumping into that fray just to save some money doesn’t appeal to me. I’d rather stay home in my jammies and eat turkey leftovers.

And with internet shopping the way it is now, I can do just that. Have my Black Friday at home.

Curiously enough, though, I don’t. I rarely shop or buy anything on Black Friday.

Guess those deals aren’t as great when I’m not in danger of being elbowed by a stranger.

I Am a Universe Unfolding

~ Kiki Writes ~ 2 Comments

Once upon a time I was talking to a friend about the disaster of a human being I am and how I find new and interesting ways to fail. And he told me “You are a universe unfolding.”

Damn I love that line. That’s a good line. I don’t mind being a disaster, but being a universe unfolding encompasses so much more than just the disaster element. I mean, when you think of it, the universe was something of a mess when it first got started and there are bits of it now that are most likely in disarray, but there are some nifty areas, too.

That’s something like me.

“I’m not the same person I used to be.” That’s the ol’ personal growth saying, isn’t it? And it’s true. I’m not the same person I was twenty years ago or ten years ago or five days ago. That’s not necessarily a good thing. Growth happens in all sorts of directions, doesn’t it? Cancer is a growth, after all. Can’t say too many people are thrilled with it. In all of my unfolding over the years, I can’t say that I’ve gotten it all right. I know I’ve unfolded some horrors, some really deep dark dimensions that weren’t for the faint of heart. I believe they like to call those times the dark night of the soul and baby, my soul was a pitch black moonless midnight, not a star to be seen.

Not every change I make to my existence is one that works out in my favor. Or in other people’s favor.

The interesting thing about being a universe unfolding is that not everyone appreciates it. Not everyone digs your expansion or your new disasters or your changes or your newness. They prefer you as you were because that’s what’s comfortable, that’s what’s known. Not everyone signed up to boldly go, you know? I can’t blame them. After all, they’re a universe, too.

The comforting thing about embracing myself as a universe unfolding is the unending aspect of it. I don’t mean that I suddenly think I’m immortal or that I’ll be remembered for eternity or anything like that. My legacy is none of my business because I’ll be dead and that presents a different set of concerns. What I mean is that I’m unending. I’m always new. I’m always finding and creating and destroying different aspects of myself and my existence. Even as a person who craves stability and who sometimes struggles with change, there’s something warm and fuzzy about the idea that I’m always…unfolding.

I am still very much a disaster in many ways. I frequently set fire to my own life with my choices. My brain can be an absolute hellscape of anxiety and depression. But instead of offering these things up as evidence of the complete failure of a human I am, I can now show them as examples of the universe I am. These are my black holes. But if you swing that telescope ’round, you’ll see the planets of my creativity and the constellations of my work and the stars of empathy and humor and intelligence, and the meteors of greatness that whiz by.

I truly am an interesting place.

And there’s always more of me to discover.

I Think Libraries Are Naturally Haunted Places

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

As a rule, most of the library staff don’t work in the library alone. We have to have at least three staff members in the building for the library to be open. The struggle for the perpetually short-staffed night shift is real. We’ve had to close early more than once because too many people called out. The two of us left still have to work our shift, just without patrons.

However, this doesn’t mean staff haven’t been in the library alone. And it’s always an eerie experience.

At the beginning of the Covid pandemic, the library closed to the public and only essential staff were allowed to be in the building on a strict schedule. Only three people were allowed in the building at a time, had to work in different areas/on different floors, and were only allowed to work for short three hour shifts. After about six weeks, it was decided that processing was an essential job and since I was doing most of the processing, that meant I went back to work in the library. I was greeted with over 100 items to process in three hour shifts no more than three days a week. Fun! It took me a over a week of those shifts to catch up.

I usually worked at the same time as my director. Rarely was any one else in the building during my shift because I took my time in the afternoons and they usually worked in the mornings. More than once, my director would leave for the day and I’d still have some work to do, so I’d spend maybe as much as an hour alone in the building to finish whatever I was working on.

I was 100% alone in the building, but it never felt like I was. I’d hear noises that sounded like someone down on the lower level or someone walking around upstairs on the children’s floor. And of course, the classic feeling like I was being watched.

It turns out that I’m not the only who’s had this experience. Other people who’ve been in the building have had similar experiences.

We’ve also had those types of experiences when the building was open. It’s not uncommon to be sitting at the circulation desk and hear someone downstairs when no one is downstairs. To the extent that we’ve gone downstairs to check. Part of this is because of the way the building is constructed. Sound travels and bounces in that building in weird ways. It would be perfect cover for a ghost, honestly.

We joke that it’s the ghost of Miss Kent, who was head librarian from 1914 to 1966. She actually started working in the library in 1910 when she was hired as an assistant for Mrs. Rose, who was the first head librarian. Anything weird that happens -the women’s restroom door closing after it’s been propped open, display books falling off shelves when no one is near them, etc.- we blame it on Miss Kent. After all, if anyone would be haunting the library, it would be her.

I think the library probably is haunted. I think most, if not all, libraries are haunted.

Think about it.

A lot of libraries have historical items. Some items are just borrowed to put on display, some belong to them. Most libraries have old books. My library is a repository of local history. We have an archive of items donated over the years, from letters to clothing to pictures to a creepy doll collection that we only recently put into storage after years of giving children nightmares. We even have an artillery shell from the Korean War. We also have many of the books from CH Moore, who at the time of his death in 1901 had one of the largest private libraries in Illinois. Just some really old shit.

It would stand to reason that some energy from these previous owners might still linger. We have entire collections that are just from one person, like the collection of clothes -including mourning gown and veil- that is currently on display. Maybe some of these people decided to stick with their belongings.

Even though this country is obsessed with getting rid of anything that’s more than a few years old and building entirely new buildings, many libraries are pretty old. They put a new addition on my library in 1991 which opened in 1992, but the original building that was built in 1906 and opened in 1908 is still there. It’s over 100 years old. Miss Kent worked in that building for over 50 years, and she wasn’t the only one to dedicate decades of her life to the library. This building’s been sitting around, collecting stories for a long time.

And then there was something that my coworker Kelsey suggested and I haven’t been able to stop thinking about it since. We’re a library. We loan items out. Who knows what kind of energies those items come back with? Something to consider.

So, the next time you go to the library (you are going to your library, aren’t you?), take a good look around and keep your ears open.

You might not be the only one in the stacks.

“Nothing Worth Mentioning”

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

When people ask me what’s going on or what I’ve been up to, my go to response is always, “Nothing worth mentioning.” Sort of like when people ask you how you are and you automatically respond with “fine”. It’s all part of the social greeting norms. Nobody really cares how you are. And nobody really cares what I’ve been doing.

I discovered years ago that I’m a dull person. People would ask me what I’d been up to and I’d honestly answer that question and watch their eyes glaze over. Or if I was part of a group conversation, someone else would interrupt and the conversation would shift and that would be the end of my participation. What have I been doing? Nothing interesting to anyone else, apparently.

Part of this is because I’m kind of a failure and didn’t do what I was supposed to do. I didn’t get married, I didn’t have kids, I didn’t get a “real” job. I think people who did all of that kind of find it hard to relate. What do we talk about if we can’t talk about the things we’re supposed to have in common? They tell me stories about their spouses and offspring and full-time work drama. What can I contribute with? I can’t. Let’s just skip it then, shall we?

The other part of this is that I’m introverted. I don’t have the spouse, 2.5 kids, picket fence, and office job to talk about, but I’m also not partying every weekend or traveling the world or other leaving-the-house activities on a regular basis. I go to work at the library day job and I come home and that’s pretty much it most weeks. It’s already been established that we’re not going to talk about what I’m working on. So, what do we talk about? Which patron acted the ass this week? Well, several, but I can’t name names because this is a small town. Gotta tread lightly so I don’t get into trouble.

In the end, “nothing worth mentioning” is the best answer because it’s the truest one. I’ve been doing things and living life, but if I wrote it in a novel, it’d be the stuff most readers would skip because they found it boring. Sure, I took a trip to South Carolina, but it was pretty much to see a pineapple fountain and relax. Don’t need more than a couple of sentences to explain that.

And that’s the thing. In the unlikely event that I actually do something worth mentioning, I’ve gotten so good at not mentioning it that I no longer really know how to mention it.

“How was your trip?”

“Oh, it was great. I had a really fun time!”

End conversation.

Unless you ask me for more details, I will not offer them up. I don’t want to bore you. And if you do ask, I will bore you with those details. What’s exciting and interesting to me is beige paint to everyone else. For someone who calls themselves a writer, I really can’t tell a story well enough to hold an audience.

(Ah. Some additional insight into my unsuccessful writing career, methinks.)

It’s something I”m working on. Both getting better at talking about the things worth mentioning and realizing that there are sometimes things worth mentioning going on in my life.

In the meantime, I’m still available to hear all about what’s going on in yours.

My Ass Might Be Acceptable If I Didn’t Have a Belly

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

Living in a society that makes body types trends and fads is wild. I have never once been in style.

The closest I came was when butts came into fashion. Juicy booties were all the rage and I’ve been growing my own backside since puberty. Which was kinda the problem. My big ass wasn’t big in exactly the right way. More wide than round. Which probably could have been forgiven if I’d had a tiny waist and flat stomach to go with it. Alas alack, a little too much waist and a lot too much belly.

Back in the long long ago, heroin chic was in. You had to be rail thin, no butt, no boobs, no body fat. Not many women (and that’s who these trends are usually directed towards) could achieve that look, though a good many earned eating disorders and body image issues trying. That was back when I was thinner than I am now, but had more boobs than anyone knew what to do with. There was no way I’d ever be able to achieve that look, not with all the anorexia I could manage. I’m not built to be small. Could you imagine taking all of the body fat off of me and leaving only a the most necessary hint of muscle behind? I’d look straight up wonky. I’m sorry, Vogue, but my thighs are meant to touch. That’s just my DNA.

That’s what’s really head-tilting about the whole body trend thing. This idea that people’s DNA is a fad, a hot for fall style, don’t be out of fashion. Like…what? How does that even make sense?

But it does. There’s money and power in that sort of manipulation. You sell diets and implants with that sort of advertising. You keep women off balance always trying to achieve the unattainable physical ideal and have a convenient way of putting them in their place if they don’t.

It’s a mindfuck.

As someone who has spent most of their existence in a fat body, I well know the toll this sort of thing can take on a person living in a society when only certain bodies are deemed worthy. And to narrow that field even further with body trends…whew. It feels like an unending failing.

The body positivity movement has been interesting in this respect because even though it has helped push larger bodies more into the mainstream for representation, there’s still certain trends. You’re not going to see anyone who looks like me…aggressively pear-shaped with a belly and bat wings, for example. It’s a bad look. Definitely not in style.

Ain’t that a bitch?

I’ve never been very good about being on trend. Even if I had the in fashion body, my style has tended to out of sync with what’s all the rage. So, it wouldn’t make much sense for me to obsess with my actual body not being the going thing, would it? And yet! It’s something that still creeps up in my mind. Little reminders that I’ll never be in style. That I’ll always be just wrong enough to miss the trend. Society has a Hot or Not page and I’m always in the Not column. And I should feel bad about that.

I admit that sometimes I do. Sometimes I forget myself and I lament about never having a body that’s in style.

And then I remember that I’m not supposed to. Bodies aren’t meant to be trends. They’re just bodies, our soul’s meat vehicles. Whatever model you’ve got is just fine.

And in my case, I’ve always had more fun being out of fashion anyway.

The Priority Shift

~ Kiki Writes ~ Leave a comment

I have no doubt that if I were to look back on the blog posts I’ve done in the past few years, I’d probably find one on the topic of priorities because I’m sure I’ve written about this before. However, I’m not that motivated. Or should I say…it’s not a priority.

Perhaps it’s not obvious, but it probably should be. I struggle with my priorities. More specifically, I struggle with correctly prioritizing things in my life. I’m not good at it. I fuck up the order consistently. What I should prioritize, I don’t, and what gets prioritized usually shouldn’t be so high on the list. Or even on the list. As a result, I spend a lot of time feeling like I’m not living my life the way I truly want to. Granted, it would take a substantial inflow of income to truly allow me to live my life the way I want to, but given the limitations I’m currently operating under, I could be doing a whole lot better.

My recent two week vacation from the library allowed me to really take a look at how I prioritize my life and what I need to change. To be honest, it’s something I’ve been half-ass working on all year. I got The Remarkable Life Deck: A Ten-Year Plan for Achieving Your Dreams by Debbie Millan for my birthday (I asked for this; it wasn’t some anvil suggestion that I needed to get my shit together). I’ve worked my way through the deck twice and now I really need to start working on what I’ve written down. So, I spent some time while I was in Charleston looking at what I wrote down and identifying some baby steps I could take in the direction of achieving my dreams the deck had produced.

To the shock of absolutely no one, the babiest of those baby steps is a shift in my priorities. And the most obvious shift was to make myself a priority.

Yea, I know what you’re thinking. As a selfish woman, I already make myself a priority. While I won’t argue with the fact that I am selfish, I have receipts to show that I don’t make myself a priority. I’ve got the high blood pressure, patellar tendonitis, GERD, parathyroid issues, insomnia, stress, weight gain, fatigue, and anxiety to prove it. Quiet self-destruction is one of my default settings and it takes a conscious effort to not succumb to the default. I tend to put everything over taking care of myself and though I’ve made improvements in that defect in the past several years, I need to be doing a whole lot better.

I need to put myself at the top of the priority list.

This means putting my health first. Putting my rest first. Putting my mental health first.

Theoretically, if and when I do that, most everything else will fall into place. Why? Well, because I’m the center of my Universe, aren’t I? The cause and solution to all of my problems. If I take care of me, then I have a better ability to take care of business, so to speak. I’ll have the time and energy and health that will make dealing with other priorities easier.

For example, it’s not a plot twist to find out that one of my better life goals is to make a living by writing. It should also not be a shocker to know that it’s very difficult and uncommon to make a living by writing. But if I want to even have a shot at achieving that dream, then I need to make my writing a priority.

This isn’t to say that writing isn’t and hasn’t been important to me. But since my terrible bout of writer’s struggle I’ve found that I got into the habit of prioritizing other things over writing because when I was struggling everything else was easier. “Let me just get this done first…” “This needs to be done now because…” Those sort of excuses can’t fly anymore. I need to subscribe to the idea that any writing is better than no writing at all and that sneaking in those words every day is the only way I’m going to get anything done.

I’ve also gotten so used to not submitting anything I write, keeping it either for Patreon purposes or for other undefined reasons outside of the occasional contest entry. I’m out of touch with the writing world (not that I was really that in-touch with it before). If I’m going to make a living, even a small one, off of writing, then I need to reconnect with that world.

So, I shift writing to the second spot on my priority list, right after myself.

Now what happens?

Everything else shifts itself around, hopefully landing in better positions, maybe some things falling off the priority list entirely.

And hopefully with this priority shift, my best life will emerge.