I do not have as many hours as Beyoncé. So I have priorities.
I have occasionally written about my bare minimums here. It is the way I manage my time, and therefore, my life. And another way to say that I have priorities.
One of the lessons from getting my eating under control that took a little longer than many of the others was that I could not get everything done. Not just that I couldn’t get all of the things done today. That I could not get done all of the things I wanted to, period. It was never going to work.
It was a bit of a hard pill to swallow, frankly. I had my sugar addiction arrested. I was sleeping enough, eating nourishing food, keeping track of my commitments, paying my bills. On time! These were huge, empowering, life-altering shifts to my day-to-day operating. But I still could not get everything done that I wanted to.
There is a coffee mug that says “You have the same hours in the day as Beyoncé.”(Look, you don’t. Neither do I. Certainly not if you have to drive yourself 45 minutes to and from work. And grocery shop. And blow out your own hair and do your own makeup. And cook dinner for yourself and your family. But I digress.) I hate that saying for more reasons than the fact that it is a lie. I hate it because it implies that there is something grand and specific that you and I should be doing with our time. And that if we are not, we are wasting it.
That mug is implying that there are priorities that you should have and they are in line with the priorities of a multi-millionaire superstar.
Right now, my priorities are basically food boundaries, relationship with husband, bare minimum self-care (exercise, water, meditation), work, and making sure there are clean dishes to cook and eat my meals. That is it. That is the sum total of what I have the energy for. My house is a mess and I don’t care. I am not knitting or crocheting. I am not cooking interesting meals. I am not doing my regular grooming rituals like doing my nails or deep-conditioning my hair.
One of the best things about priorities is that you have to be really honest about what you want and the amount of time you have. Before I used the tool of prioritizing, I didn’t have to look at the truth about what I could get done because I was living in the lie that I could get it all done. Because, at least in theory, I had the same 24 hours as Beyoncé. But in having the clear head that was the result of giving up my drug foods and having my eating under control, I could see that the math didn’t work out. That it was never going to work out. And I had to make choices.
One of my priorities is, and truly always has been, rest. I need a lot of down time. A lot. I need to daydream. I need silence and space and solitude.
For much of my life, that seemed like a terrible thing. It was seen as laziness and vanity. It felt wasteful and shameful. And perhaps it was when I had no priorities.
But now I have priorities. And I honor them. I manage my time and my life. Once I really looked at my life and got specific about what was most important to me, my priorities were obvious. Food first. Husband second. And once those were settled, everything else just clicked right into place. Simple.
But for me, food first is the priority of all priorities. Without the clarity and peace that having my addictive eating under control brings, I have one priority: sugar. And that “one” priority comes with its own set of other priorities. How to get it, how to eat it without anyone judging me, how to get it out of myself without it showing on my body, how to stop once I started. And with that many priorities, how can anything else stand a chance?
onceafatgirl 