Recently I’ve been thinking about my life’s priorities as a way of understanding decisions I make regarding how I spend my time. This has a lot to do with the fact that I’m now working full time and my time is therefore much tighter. My first priority that I’ve identified is survival. Of course put this way, it’s not surprising. This translates into putting top priority on eating, sleeping, working at a job and such things as hygiene, laundry, grocery shopping and paying bills.
My second priority is people/friends/being social/church. Since I’m single and live by myself, I don’t have anything social “built-in” to my everyday life. So this requires me to be proactive and go out, attend events, meet up with people, etc. As a side note, by personality, I usually prefer a low key atmosphere to a large and wild crowd, meaning my preference is usually to spend time with one to a few close friends. So I wonder, if I were to get married, if I’d be as interested in getting out and being social as much.
I’ve recognized that between these first two priorities, there’s not a large amount of time left over. These two things, and all of the other lesser ones, are in tension with one another, fighting for time and other resources. And there is some flexibility in them. For example, while eating is generally a higher priority than being social, I may put off eating for a while in order to do something social. Or if a major event happens to a friend, I might put off work and sleep temporarily in order to be with the friend.
All of the other things in my life are prioritized below the first two items. The main other things I can think of that I spend time on are blogging/journaling, reading and making music. Looking at it this way, it easier to see why I have a hard time getting around to working on music. And I don’t have time for really anything beyond what I’ve mentioned. That’s why I don’t watch TV, among other things.
