PRIORITIZING

When you've had deadlines and responsibilities for all of your adult life, you wonder how to prioritize your time and wants when you find yourself in a different place and space in your life. Well, at least I did.

Having always been interested in what goes on around me...nosy some might say...I have studied people and systems for much of my life. This is an exciting time to be living. Obama has promised to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and a lot of people believe that, if anyone can do it, he just might. He seems to be starting off quite wisely, surrounding himself with the people he believes will be making a change from the last administration, not that being simply honest wouldn't achieve that as an important first step!

One thing about 'beyond mid-life crisis' or even being what young people call 'over-the-hill', both are accurate, is that there is no longer a personal crisis. When you are over the hill, you usually have a long way to coast back down to the bottom. For most of us it is just doing what we like to do until we die, wishing we didn't have to fill out long forms, pay taxes, more taxes, and fill in more forms. The fantasy that you can ever relax in your life is possibly fulfilled in the rare instances when a man has a wife that takes care of all his time-consuming needs while he can play. Those women seem to be a dying breed though it is hard for me to tell since I was never among them.

It is now possible to watch an occasional sit-com, now that I've realized TV is not the place to get all your news, and pundits are guessing and too often wrong to really be admired. For a while I even tried to struggle with watching Fox News, but only because I was a guest, trying to be polite, in a house that liked it! MSNBC has taken over trying to be fair and balanced and has recently had a pundit representing each party view. Too often the time allotted them is too short and, since there are those who hog the floor, one doesn't get heard, or neither is heard as they both refuse to stop talking at the same time. Pat Buchanan and Chris Matthews still hold the Oscar on that. Chris still asks questions and then talks over the answers.

I tried listening to music instead but I found it too distracting because I liked it and tuned into it, whereas the pundits are easily tuned out...as easily as elevator music. Getting breaking news on the computer is nice. It gives brief facts and the reader can choose to hear more or not. This is not possible on air. About the only thing I can't tune out are the commercials (unless I mute them, which I do and forget to turn the sound back on) which catch your attention because the sound engineers apparently raise the gain on them to catch those who are trying to tune out or sleep.

The unfortunate part of all this is that there is so much to be learned and watched, laughed at and cried over, on the Internet today. I would never have learned to play the piano had that been the case in my youth. Putting things away and getting rid of things I no longer need has fallen to the bottom of the priority list. Now I can understand why one of my patients many years ago never got the pictures, diplomas, and all the stuff doctors put up on their walls where they were supposed to be. It is why he never got the photographs of his trips organized. As I threw thousands of slides away after my father-in-law died, so will those who succeed me. We don't take most of them for posterity, we take them to remind ourselves we were young and want to hang to all of our past which our descendants more than likely will file them away as I have a box full of of glass negatives from the turn of the Century.

Meanwhile, I hang onto the things that give me pleasurable memories even if I have to wade through the basement, with repairmen commenting that the fire department would condemn it. People are happily invited in though I am certain many might wonder how I can find anything and have horror over the clutter. Those who really know me understand why there is always something I have lost and for which I am hunting and cursing at the time wasted while the Poltergeists hang onto my stuff. Like the Bridezillas look at Bride Magazine and think they will be like the models in it, I fantasy that one day my house will be neat again. Knowing that only I could make it that way, I smile and know it will never be as it is at the bottom of my priority list, unlikely to happen in my lifetime.