Priorities

It never ceases to amaze me the number of people who assume I am wasting my time on things that should not be priorities. When I complain I do not have time to do anything else or for something to go wrong in my plans, I am told to only do what is important.

So let us discuss what is important.

I work. I have a physically and mentally intensive job that pays slightly more than minimum wage. I have spent the last fourteen years dedicating myself to my family and when I remarried eleven years ago, I found myself in the position of having to ask if I could attend college. The answer was never quite an outright “no” but it was some variation of “you have to find the money”. Now, I realize I could have argued fiercely, etc. but my reality involved trying to please my husband and him never actually being pleased, but I still made the effort. So I have a job that pays less and it is my own fault for making assumptions about the future. Pay less though it does, it is income and we need it. I feel comfortable making the assessment that this is important and I have not received any feedback stating otherwise.

I attend college. I do this online on a piss poor connection. It takes me longer to wait for web pages to load than it does to actually read the page. This makes research fun! Five minutes to get a page to load if I do not have to reload it because my connection broke and maybe 10 seconds to realize that it is completely irrelevant to what I am researching. I stick with it anyway. Why? Because by going to school online I can be here for my children still. Because, I do not know if I brought this up, but I do not get paid enough at my job to support myself and my children. I am attending school full time and sometimes I do really well and sometimes I struggle to get a passing grade. I feel comfortable making the assessment that this is important and I have not received any feedback stating otherwise.

I spend time with my children whenever possible. Sometimes between keeping up with my schoolwork, working and lack of sleep, I just crash when I get home, but most of the time I would rather be doing something, anything with the children. We have projects we work on, sometimes we sit and talk, and sometimes we play games together. I take them with me whenever I have errands to run outside of doctor’s appointments. We go check on the horses and sort the storage unit and talk about the future. This is very important.

I have medical issues. I do not want to go into detail on them here, but suffice it to say, they are serious enough to be a threat to my life if I neglect them, but just keep me tired if I keep up with them. I am seeking solutions that are permanent as possible with out contradicting everything else. We will see where that goes as soon as possible. In this category I will also include that I do work out either at home or at the gym when the opportunity presents itself.

I am selling my house. There is work involved in keeping it up and in continuing to improve on it. I will not bore you with the details of that right now.

I am also getting a divorce. Before anyone asks, no, it is not salvageable and it really is not up to me either way. My husband wants a divorce and has been rather certain of that since February of 2008. He will not let me move out with out punitive action till the house sells though. This is really stressful, but this is my life right now.

I occasionally sleep. I try to sleep more when my schedule permits, but it does not always work out for me. I have had sleep issues since I was an infant and they have not really gotten much worse but are having more of an effect on my life due to my hectic schedule. Usually this is the first thing that ends up suffering when there is simply too much to be done in one day.

I play an online computer game called World of Warcraft. Since being house bound for a time after my first surgery, I have really enjoyed playing this game and have made some good friends playing it as well. It is my stress relief, but since starting work and school, I mostly log on and use it to chat with those friends since they are playing and it is easier for them to have only one program opened and not have to try to talk on the phone at the same time. Since my connection is so poor, I do not get to raid[1] most of the time anyway, which is the aspect I enjoy most about the game. I spend maybe 20 minutes on average per day actually playing. I would like to spend more, but I do not have that much free time. I believe for the relaxation value and entertainment value allowed it is very cost effective at only $15 a month. When you consider the other entertainment options that appeal to me, this is an incredible bargain.

What is important? It seems that everything is.

I want more. I want to do more and find the time to do it. So, in all likelihood, when I do finally get my head above the water in regards to actually having a few minutes of free time for myself, I will find something else to throw myself into full tilt. It will probably be ‘important’ too, but not as important as what I am doing now.

1- A raid is a planned event involving 10, 20, 25 or 40 players acting in cooperation to achieve goals that would be unattainable in smaller numbers.