priorities – Kiki Writes About…

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.

You’re probably looking at the title of this blog post going, “What the hell?” Trust me. It all connects and it’s all a lot of introspective, realization bullshit that you probably don’t care about, but that’s okay. You can refer back to it when you decide I’m not acting like myself.

I’m going to try to make this as brief and witty as possible, so let’s start at the beginning.

I love horoscopes. I don’t care who knows it. I look at them very scientifically. Statistically speaking, given the number of people born under any given sign, it stands to reason that any horoscope on any given day would be accurate for at least one person and, hey, why not me? Besides, even when they’re flat out wrong, I’m amused, and sometimes they say I’m going to be a bitch or I should take it easy and be lazy and you’d better believe I use that like a doctor’s note.

Every year I have a solar return chart done. A solar return chart analyzes where the planets are in your chart for that given year. So, this year, it was about what planets are in what houses while I’m being 35. So, amusement and excuses. And once again, from a scientific standpoint, it’s interesting to try to figure out how much this information influences my behavior, consciously and subconsciously, and therefore makes the reading “true”.

This solar return chart said that I’d be dealing with self-worth and part of that would come with analyzing how people treat me. And to be honest, I have a tendency to be treated as an afterthought, not out of any malice, but just that’s how things have gotten to be. Other people and their needs come first because Kiki can take care of herself. And just like the horoscope said (probably because it’s been lying in my brain all year), this is really starting to come into better clarity for me. I realize this is an energy I carry with me and can project even when I don’t want to.

It was illustrated this past week when I went for an eye exam. I filled out my paperwork, was told it would be a few minutes, and that was the last time I saw anyone until I left almost an hour later. I never got the exam. I said I had an emergency and I had to leave. This was not a lie. I did have an emergency and that emergency was that I needed to get out of there. I hate eye exams and in the past few years, I’ve really come to dread dealing with the people there because they treat me like I haven’t been wearing glasses since I was in third grade and haven’t been wearing contacts since I was 13. Sitting in that little room, forgotten, did nothing for my mood or my temper.

And for everyone saying that they would have said something earlier about the wait, good for you. I didn’t say anything for two reasons. One, I would have been there longer in order to endure my exam and by that point I was done being there. Two, I was too busy having an existential crisis about being invisible. Basically, I was no longer in a good mental place to have this exam done and when you’re uptight about all things relating to eyeballs, that’s not a good place to be.

(I know that sounds stupid. I think it sounds stupid. And one day I might tell you all about my eyeball issues, but for now, let’s stick to the topic.)

I left. As the incident rolled over and over in my head, I realized that a) I need to find another eye place because I deserve to be as comfortable as possible when I’m doing something that gives me the anxiety and this place isn’t up to that challenge and b) I deserve to be seen and I deserve to be seen in everyday life without having to yell for attention. Right now, I feel like I have to scream at the top of my lungs just to be ignored rather than completely overlooked. And that can’t be acceptable anymore.

Then yesterday, I saw pictures from Davy Jones’s last performance as part of The Monkees. This would have been in 2011 when he was touring with Peter and Micky for the 45th anniversary. That year, they did a show within driving distance of me and I really wanted to go, but I didn’t go.

I didn’t go because I was working a day job that I hated, a job that didn’t like to give me any time off during the work week because “it would look bad” because I hadn’t been there “long enough”, a job that the guys I worked with hated doing as much as I did and felt that was beneath them. I didn’t go because I put work ahead of everything else, like I always do, and decided that they were right and I hadn’t worked hard enough to earn that concert and shoved my heart’s desire to the bottom of the list. I told myself I’d have to catch the guys during the 50th reunion.

Because that’s what I’ve always done. Put what someone else wants first. No matter who it is, no matter what it is, it trumps me and whatever I have going on lest I risk being called selfish and be given lectures on hard work and earning fun things and how inconvenient it is for me to want to do things that I want to do. It is the established law of the west and one I’ve accepted.

Davy didn’t make it to the 50th reunion (which is next year) and I’ll never get another chance to see him perform.

That’s a supreme bummer to think about, but indicative of the way I’ve been running my world.

If I don’t respect my wants and needs and desires and goals and wishes and dreams and requirements, nobody else is going to either. Nobody else is going to go out of their way for me because I don’t go out of my way for me. I need to lead by example. It’s the only way shit is ever going to get done.

Me putting myself first sometimes is not going to go over well because it’s going to buck the status quo and the order of the Universe a lot and people are going to have to get used to seeing me even when I don’t yell for their attention.

But, hey. That’s what my horoscope said, man.

Tag: priorities

The Priority Shift

A Horoscope, An Eye Exam, and Davy Jones