act on my true priorities instead of others' priorities

mainly because work takes up so much of my time, and i haven’t been good at setting boundaries there. i’m still working 45-50 hour weeks, and it likely won’t change until next year, if that.

partly because I have become much better at this than I used to be. And peratly because my “Stop caring so much what other people think of me” goal is pretty much the same thing for me.

Because I`ve been doing a lot better on this! I`ve rearranged and changed a lot of things in my life, started to make priorities that feels right to me instead of what I think I ought to be doing, and I`ve been feeling a lot happier. So I thought I was ready to mark this one as done.

But apparently, I`m not quite there yet afterall.I`m in a really difficult situation with my boyfriend right now. It`s so difficult and depressing. I was going over some arguments for and against breaking up with him. And it struck me: one of my main worries about this is how very disappointed my parents will be if I leave him!! How absurd is that? Without even noticing, I was picturing that depressing phonecall to my mother in my head, and it really worries me. I mean, they will obviously feel bad for me as they want me to be happy, and they feel bad for me when I`m not. But they will also be really disappointed. They wanted a successful daughter, in their own definition of the word, they were picturing me as a lawyer, with a good income, nice husband and lovely kids. Instead, they have a rather chaotic ADD daughter, who can`t really figure out what to do with her life, with a mediocre salary, a separation anxiety dog and quite a chaotic life.

I`ve been dealing with that, I`ve learned to accept that they don`t get what`s important to me, and that they will probably never understand my priorities. And I had really accepted that that is their problem, not mine, and I was quite happily making plans for my life that I know they won`t understand. Without worrying about it. Or so I thought.

But, I guess, me being in this relationship is one thing that they do understand and approve of. They like him, he`s a nice person, and he has a good career and good income prospects. They`re very happy about that. I thought I didn`t care, but apparently I do. Sigh. Will have to work on that too. I mean, seriously, what my parents might think should not be a factor in this decision, that`s just absurd!

while my priorities for the past month have largely been driven by work and recovering from work, i’ve not acted on my priorities and that’s not cool. no writing, not enough time with friends, not enough time restructuring my life.

i need discipline!

while i’m not fond of ignoring people’s requests, this has been a much better time. the writing isn’t going as well as i’d hoped, but my word count is nothing to sneeze at.