Conflicting Priorities
Today's been my first true test of my new found mentality. It's half past 12 in the afternoon, and I have:
- A lot of work in the queue
- A wife who's had to call in sick due to another flare up of facial pain
- A garden that needs work and professional opinions
- A lot of people emailing me with massive requests
- A workout to do
- A dog to walk
- Dinner to make
- A 1,667 word blog post to write
- Messages to reply to
- Calm to keep
As expected, my gut reaction has been an attitude of Do All Of The Things, and I'm already feeling the stubborn rise of absolutism. They will be done, or I will be a failure.
Or I could compromise.
Between 9am to 5pm, work takes my attention as much as humanly possible, outside of lunch and breaks, else I don't get paid. My wife's health and happiness is paramount. That's three things at the very top.
The workout can be cut short, and the dog walked straight after work, so that's Two easily accomodated. There are things I can whip up for dinner in less than 10 minutes, so that's not a problem.
Messsages can wait, as can the garden. It's a crap hole, but it'll keep.
That leaves the blog.
And I really don't want to compromise.
Emotionally, it's a combinanation of having worked very, very hard to generate a solid lead on my target, and my having created a rod for my own back. I must write 30 posts in 30 days totally 50,000 words. If I miss that, I would have failed and it was all for nought.
Or I could compromise.
My wife is more important. My dog is more important. My health is more important. My work is more important. All of them add more value than words that will be read by a handful of people on the internet.
So instead of sacrificing time cheering up and looking after my wife, or walking and playing with my dog, or working on my physical and mental health and well being just so I can hit a word count on a blog for today, I can instead write a short post in 10 or 15 minutes talking about the struggle with priories and my way forward. Still on topic for the blog, still relevant the overall theme, and still better than posting a zero word day.
And then, I can let it go.
Plenty of time to catch back up.
Words - 429 Running total - 29,715 (59.4%, 291 words behind target)
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