Priorities

I'm working in my dining room. If I look peaceful in this picture, don't be fooled. My stuff is in haphazard piles and tumbling occasionally to the floor. I am here because my office has become too chaotic for work. I am slowly transforming my house into what looks like a FEMA disaster area. And there are too many specific tasks associated with every slip of paper and every scrap of what looks like trash to be able to ask anyone to help. What I need is more hours to get things done in a day...and for an insomniac with more than a tad bit of workaholism, that's a tall order.

I'm realizing these things about myself lately - the workaholism, my lifelong inability to stay organized, the need for control over the details in my career and life in general, my craving to hit the road and play show after show, and my desire to enjoy the innumerable hobbies I've been neglecting...and how those things are not compatible.

Probably 11 or 12 years ago, my college pastor gave me an article to read: "The Tyranny of the Urgent" by Charles Hummel. It mentions how a cotton mill manager once told him that he was allowing the urgent tasks in his life crowd out time for the things which were actually important. I've thought about this countless times in the years since, and while I know this still happens, it's less the problem. Nowadays, my life and time are crowded by things which are actually important, but I'm not always wise in determining with long-range focus which are the MOST important RIGHT NOW.

Priorities. My good friend Amy was telling me the other day that in your twenties you're figuring out what is important to you, and you spend your thirties learning to prioritize them. She is one of the wisest and most compassionate friends I know. And I think I see she's right (per usual). Now, at 30, I realize that I have recently grasped what I want to spend my time on, but I haven't figured out in what order. I guess I've got about 9 years to learn.