I've been pretty quiet here over the last few months.
My goal with this blog of writing at least one thought every day came about for a few different reasons. First, I graduated college not yet feeling very smart, and I figured if I mandated that I at least have one new thought every day, well, maybe someday that would change.
But beyond that, I started this blog because I like writing. It's not only a valuable skill that I wanted to keep sharp, but it's a way for me to process and, being someone who is only a fraction as eloquent as he'd like to be, practice putting these amorphous thoughts in my head into letters and grammar rules. Writing sits right next to songwriting and guitar and piano and photography and hiking in the thankfully long list of hobbies in life I get fulfillment from.
For the past two years of living on my own, I've been soaking in that freedom and independence by making these hobbies a more central part of my life. And I was successfully finding time for each. There were plenty of weekends where I would go on a hike and bring my camera, and get back from the hike and edit the pictures, and spend that evening toying away on my piano and writing a blog post, and then work on a new song the entire next day. But that wasn't necessarily because I really wanted to be doing that much at once; it was more so because I felt guilty not doing them all, as if my camera would notice if I spent too long with the piano. I felt to be truly committed to all of these things, I couldn't really take breaks. I had to write one thought every day.
Maybe it's just the infinite wisdom that comes with being 24 instead of 23 that I realized how wrong that really is. And seeing as I'm still only a fraction as eloquent as I'd like to be, I can only really explain why by reciting a quote I saw on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn might be my favorite social media because your feed is either college graduates trying to make their cashier job at Joann Fabrics sound like quantum physics or C-tier influencers trying to stir you up with a provocative headline about how "inspired" they are. I fell for the headline in this instance though. I don't even remember who it was or when I saw it, but the post read:
"You don't have to go to all your kid's baseball games."
I expected the post that followed to be some sort of crypto-bro manifesto about how the only thing more important than family is the grind or some hyper-capitalist BS, but it was more nuanced than that. The way I took it was this: humans are really freaking bad at understanding what "priorities" actually are, and we often have a false sense that if something is your highest priority, then it should trump everything else all of the time. But that's not how priorities work. Priorities are about balance, because baked into the idea of "priorities" is that we all have multiple things that are very important to us, and all deserve some attention some of the time.
Every parent will tell you their kids are their #1 priority, which is great. But that doesn't mean if work conflicts with the kids' sports schedules 20 different times throughout the year that you have to go watch your kid all 20 times. If work is your #2 priority, it's okay sometimes for that to trump family. You don't have to go to all your kid's baseball games.
I've spent more of my free time over the past two years writing these blog posts than doing literally anything else. Perhaps music was more important to me, but if time spent is a CAT scan of your priorities, this blog was my highest. But when January of this year hit, I decided I wanted to record an album. I had a batch of songs I was really proud of that I thought fit well together, so the timing seemed right. For the first two months, I would work on my album for a few hours each night, then turn to this blog and write whatever was on my mind, and then go to bed at 12:30 am. And it was miserable.
Until I realized it was okay to not go to all of my kid's baseball games. That it was okay to take three months and focus on the album and forget about this blog. That truly prioritizing something isn't a resignation to some things being less important than others but a recognition that you've got many important things in your life, and they all deserve attention at some point.
My album is now done, and it's coming out this Friday. And I'm really thankful I dedicated the time I did to it because I'm really proud of how it turned out. And now that it's done, I can refocus on other things for a bit. So here I am.
Comments