Priorities: Re-Examined
This week felt hard.
Well bother, lately every week has seemed hard hasn’t it?
First it was adjusting to married life, then my car broke down, now I have no time.
What’s the excuse? I’m caught between working my day job to “pay the bills” and rehearsing/performing music in the community. There was just no time to focus on production this week.
But that isn’t quite true. There were plenty of hours on Thursday and Friday that I could have been tirelessly working on videos and creating content. Instead I spend them with my husband, who I’ve barely seen since the honeymoon. “But don’t you live with him,” you may ask, “why sacrifice productivity for laziness?”
In truth, it wasn’t laziness that I fell prey to this week; it felt more like exhaustion and relief. My husband has been working so many overtime hours to make up the money we have spent on my car and on our wedding. I got a job that is physically and mentally demanding to pay back my student loans, and the only reason I chose to do it was because it was familiar to me.
For the first time in my life, I feel like I don’t want to learn. I have no interest in the job training because it doesn’t further my career in any way. Then I’m tested during training and beat myself up because I’m not performing as well as I should. But my boss says she likes that I’m hard on myself. To me, it doesn’t exactly feel like a good mentality to have.
This week I had to make a choice. Do I spend the quality time that both my husband and I need together to strengthen our relationship, or do I spend the hours I have working on my career? I made my choice and I don’t regret it. It’s hard to see the reward that comes from working on my videos at the moment, and this rare chance to be with my husband was something I was desperately waiting for.
Is that a fault in my priorities? What kind of sacrifices will I need to make in the future to be successful? I foresee myself spending every waking moment working and forgetting what I’m working for. All this business about “paying back my debt” is only worth it if I’m actually working in my field.
I’m losing my patience quickly. I’m losing the motivation to get up and go to a job that I swore I left forever years ago. I long for something more satisfying, more invigorating, and something healthier.
But how do I start? I’m not in a position where I can just jump in head first and spend a bunch of money to get started; I am completely broke. I want less hours at my job and more hours practicing my craft. I want to write and read and sing and play and create and make things and I want to share my ideas with the world. Can anybody see me? Does anybody care?
I keep telling myself, “they haven’t found you yet. Keep trying, eventually you’ll find your audience’. After years of saying this to myself, it starts to mean less and less.
There’s something inside me that keeps telling me I’m destined for better, for greater, for bigger. That little voice grows stronger when I’m playing in the orchestra or singing in the choir. That voice is shouting when I’m filming and when I’m writing and when I’m practicing. This is what I’m meant for.
I don’t know how the next couple of months or years is going to work out for me. I set extremely high goals for myself with no clue how to achieve them. I must be better, or else what is the point? What is the point of working when you can’t spend your down time with the ones you love? What is the point of paying bills when the money is spent on something you’ve already lost? What is the point of telling people you love what you do when they don’t even see what it is you are doing?
My priorities need to be re-examined, my goals need to be fleshed out, and my life needs to be fulfilled. Otherwise, what is the damn point of it all?
