priorities

I was talking with a friend the other day who was telling me about a recent dinner her family had spent with her husband's parents. She and her husband and their little baby had just come back from a long permaculture conference, and she was excited about what she'd experienced and learned during the conference. She was telling her in-laws about all the different things she'd like to try that she'd experienced there.

"You know, you can't do everything you want to," her mother-in-law told her.

Why not? She wanted to know.

I'm more or less of the same mentality she is. Why not? Or at least, why not try? Like she said, you can't sit around doing nothing just because you might not have time for everything.

The only problem with wanting to try everything that interests me, I'm finding, is that I always seem to have too many projects and too little time. Now if I could just blow off the projects that aren't currently drawing me and think, "Maybe one day, maybe not," then I think it would be fine. Instead, I get a little weird about accomplishing things.

What might start out as a small to-do list suddenly seems to billow out of control. Before I know it, I'm adding project minutiae (buy cups for starting seeds), then soon after, I'm adding any random interest that strikes me to the list (build bee boxes), then the minutiae associated with random interests (find cheap trays for bee boxes). Thing is, I might never keep bees. Seriously! Do I need to be spending time watching for a good price on the trays for the bee boxes for the bees I might never even keep?

It sounds unbelievable, doesn't it? I should publish one of these out of control to-do lists some time, except I think they'd be hard to find since eventually simply knowing that they're lurking around somewhere overwhelms me and I have to destroy them.

I was considering this topic standing in front of the goat barn last week, and I decided to ask myself, what are the most important things I hope to accomplish this year? If I had to list my bare-bones priorities, would they be realistic, or is it possible that I already have a mental to-do list that is starting to spin out of control?

Off the top of my head, I quickly listed 4 projects I'd like to complete by the end of 2010. At number 4, I could have gone on to list several more, but I was getting the picture that even those I'd already spouted were bordering on unrealistic. It seemed wise to stop the train that's trying to get going before it ever reaches the careening and wrecking point.

The List

One
Grow and preserve enough fruit and vegetables to support our family's produce needs for the whole year.

Two
Get Penny bred and milking again, and purchase a companion for her, by the end of the year.

Three
Oversee the building of the new house by coordinating the contractors, filing appropriate paperwork, and finding the most financially viable options for the building project.

Four
Have a new baby.


Yikes! Number 4 sure is the kicker, isn't it? The rest sounds fairly reasonable until you add birth, birthing recovery, sleeplessness, exhaustion, crankiness, and weepiness into the mix. For all of us.

It has been amazingly helpful to define my priorities for this year. I am not a "resolution" type person, nor do I really analyze things each New Year's to say what's working, what's not, what should stay, what should go. But I can see why these things appeal to people so. If my time is adequately filled by the priorities I've outlined above, then when another draw on my time is proposed - a new class to attend or teach, a side job, a new skill to learn, a new animal to care for - I can make an educated decision about whether or not I have the time for that, rather than saying "Yes!" based on interest alone, just to be left overwhelmed and frustrated a month down the line.

And it has given me the freedom to not add more to the to-do list. No thank you overactive ambition, I have enough already.

In between the big priorities, we do other stuff. It's not all about the list. We still do our co-ops, which we enjoy, and we amble around the property, stopping here and there to study a big fat black woolly worm of unknown origin or a very strange thing growing on an evergreen tree. (I know money doesn't grow on trees, but perhaps brains do.)



We stop by the swings so Mazzy can blink her little eyes in the wind as she goes up and down and Sydney can show off her newest tricks.







We hover by the tipi Jeff put up, while Sydney sticks her head out and pretends again to be Native American, her newest fascination.



We watch incoming storms for the fun of it, and we marvel at Mazzy's new skills.







It's nice to have a little more time that is free and unaccounted for, on any list of any kind. Our days have gotten longer, and often go slower. This is a good thing for the Spring.

And of course, the priorities can be (and will be, and already have been) tweaked when needed. They're not written in stone. How confining would that be!

There are so many interesting things out there just itching to make it on this year's priority list. But they will have to be patient, as will I. We'll have to have faith that there will be another year and another list and a time where there is a blank line for something different. And if not? Well then we'll have to have faith that checking off all the interesting experiences available isn't the point of This Whole Life anyway. Right?