Prioritizing

After I wrote the blog last night, my mind starting thinking about priorities. As I’ve become more aware of my emotions, my thoughts, and how life situations impact them both and my overall sense of “energy”, I’ve realized I can’t do it all. Which is funny because I’ve spent all my life ruminating on how to do it all. Do great at my job, great at feeding myself, great at exercise, great at mental health, great at relationships, great at sex, great at housekeeping, great at … you get it. Everyone told me I was being too hard on myself or that I am so “motivated” or “driven”. I never really accepted those compliments because, I suppose, deep down, all of this has been an attempt to frantically try to pull myself together and become “acceptable”. So I’ve never really believed them when they said I’m too hard on myself, and so I’ve never really considered seriously just allowing myself to focus on a few things at a time. It didn’t seem possible because it felt like life or death to “Fix Me”. So last night my mind was thinking about what are my priorities right now. Because I can’t do it all. I can tell how worn out I am. And the structure of my life is just about to go through yet another big transition as I begin to work again. So last night I started making a list of what I felt were my priorities right now and then made a secondary list of things that needed to be put on the backburner until I have more capacity. Going through this process feels really helpful in installing mental “yield” signs as I anticipate I’ll still experience thoughts begging me to focus on several dozen other concerns, reportedly, with high urgency.

Priorities (in no particular order):

• Cardio: I would like to explore the theme of cardio activity in my life. I feel a bit burned out on Zumba. I feel a pull towards doing something alone. Perhaps walking. This is valuable because of the obvious benefits to multiple areas of living when you’re regularly getting physical activity. Plus, it keeps my body and mind busy at some level, allowing myself to explore what my mind is talking about from a more objective perspective.

• Balanced/Holistic Eating: I would like to continue to explore this area of ingesting energy into my body for day-to-day energy needs. With a long history of unresolved distress eating, I think this is great to put at the top of the priority list in the same way I think cardio is essential. This is some baseline, foundational stuff to built the rest of my priorities on top of since this fuels my body and mind, both essential to any life endeavor.

• Becoming Acquainted With My Unconscious Activity: It’s become clear to me now that I am not my thoughts but my thoughts are recurring. They began a long time ago and have been conditioned and rehearsed. I have been spending large amounts of energy repressing them from my own awareness (and others’) as well as spending immense amounts of energy looking like A Normal Human (tm). I want to clear up some bandwidth on my sense of existing by beginning to identify these things and accepting that which I have been, that I am, and be open to who I can become. I envision two methods for this: transcripts (stream of consciousness journaling) and working with a therapist to unpack them.

  • As a specific example of one of the unconscious things I learned about myself is how I hold my partner(s) in some kind of demigod/therapist/mother/savior role. I have been exploring the idea of seeing all my partnerships, even my anchor partner, as a friend-FIRST and a lover second. It’s been intoxicating to “fall in love” with someone and skip the labor of building a friendship but I now see how that results in me feeling really unsafe in the relationship due to the precariousness of romantic relationships vs. relationships that are focused on fluidity and a default of acknowledging the person changes and working with that. I want to keep working within my partnerships to reconstruct how I see them as friends first,… not people who need to accept me or else my life situation disintegrates.

  • Another specific example of one of the unconscious things I’ve realized about myself is that with so much of my mental activity historically being unconscious, I had no idea when I was exhausted or how specifically I was exhausted. I was living according to shoulds. I shouldn’t be tired after hanging out with that friend. I shouldn’t find it overwhelming to go get groceries. I want to work on continuing awareness of my energy stores and honoring them.

• Employment: I will begin to work again in less than two weeks. I have had a three month hiatus which was hell but absolutely necessary to gain awareness of the noise in my mind even absent all objective stresses that I had previously been blaming my noisy mind on. Returning to work, I have some new challenges of integrating my new self-knowledge to create a relationship with employment that is healthier to me.

• BioFam: Over 2022, my parents rekindled their relationship with me, having become aware of the neglectful style of parenting that was used when I was developing. We’ve begun meeting 1 on 1 once a month and talking about all kinds of things. Sometimes me and my dad just sing and play music or wax philosophically on culture or the mind. My parents are in their mid-70’s and I know very deeply how important it is to me to really savor, marinate in, develop, heal, and connect with my parents. They are a huge priority to me right now.

• Reading: Reading is a supplemental activity to the purging and cleaning I’m doing of stale thought patterns (see bullet point further above). I think I’m ready to engage with other stories, other realities, with the past, with fantasy, and with challenge. I really enjoy playing book roulette where I search the library ebooks by a keyword I’m ruminating on and just scroll through and see what books are available and download something. It’s very satisfying to be spontaneous, for it to be instant, to not be able to judge the book by its cover, and to be exposed to books I wouldn’t ordinarily look for. Plus it helps me practice noticing how I judge my mind for being distracted, etc.

• Wild Mind: I want to continue to invest in the thought-check (aka mindfulness) of whether I’m judging my mind’s activity/focus or whether I am allowing my mind to do whatever it wants without judgment

• Fashion: Yeah, I feel weird this is here, but it is. My new job is hybrid which means I’ll be in office twice a week and also attending public-facing events. I gave away all my professional attire since I have never liked that kind of clothing and I didn’t expect to find myself in a corporate setting again. Now, I think this is the kind of company that doesn’t mind jeans but I have a deficit of nice tops. So I think it’s time to explore some new costumes for my body to wear at business human groups.

• Artistic Self-Expression: This one has the potential to be a should, but that’s why I’m being very specific about what this means. This is meant to encapsulate five distinct types of expression that I am confident I like and feel most authentic doing.

  • 1. playing the piano

  • 2. capturing meaningful imagery, media, or quotes that I come across and either sharing them on social media and/or making some kind of art out of them.

  • 3. Using watercolor to create more images of consciousness

  • 4. Whilst I’m reading all these new books, highlight the new words I’m learning and find a way to ritualize learning that word (maybe through a “word of the day” I share on social media? I dunno).

  • 5. Play with how to engage with the childhood content I still have in order to nurture, celebrate, get to know, and actualize the energies/stories/experiences of my younger self that were repressed.

Delay Intentional and Significant Focus/Energy In The Following:

• Focusing on child housemate’s mental health and development (I really want to be a safe adult in this kid’s life)

• Organizing my digital files better

• Pushing growth for my photography business

• Self promotion / speaking tour

• Outdated Impulses that I Will Address at A Later Time

  • Performing relationship roles with my partners

  • Body shame, desire for fitness, strength

  • Moving somewhere else

  • Worrying that my body is going to shit and that every action I take increases it.

  • Worrying about how addicted to distraction and stimulation I am

  • Worrying you are wasting your life (you gotta let this go so you can focus on your unconscious work!)

• Figuring out how to fix my sense of reality and derealization

• Relationship with Adam

• Anything that has to deal with shame

• Making healthy meals at home several nights a week (yes to health but no to this narrow outcome)

• Traveling (unless opportunity arises or interest organically grows)

• Dating more people

• Worrying about finances

• Attending things just because I am hoping for an interesting interaction but I'm not guaranteed it

• Meditation culture

• Weaning off phone use

• Restoring my connection with my younger sister

• Throwing my hands up in the air saying this isn't working ... The journaling will help if you are brave enough to be honest once a day.

• Meeting with friends I am not thrilled to be meeting with (not cuz they suck but because I need to manage my social energy carefully right now)

• Figuring out sexuality stuff

• Building my coaching business

• Going through my possessions and paring down

• Overachieving on my to do list

• Spontaneously taking on any new obligations

• Manic shame based reaction to my health stats (catastrophism and out of control sense)

• Yoga / Tai Chi, etc.

• Going to new social groups

• Trying to impact the world more positively