priorities – Sweat & Sparkle

Bring It

I want to post this quote everywhere: on my blog, on Facebook, on a t-shirt, on my damn forehead, just so no one misses it.

Losing my mom has taught me a lot, and one of the most important is that life is so shockingly short. Our time and energy are precious, and we have choices about what we spend them on. It’s mystifying to me how some people opt to blatantly waste time: on jealousy, pettiness, competitiveness, childishness, absolutely worthless drama and silliness.

I say: if you are hell bent on wasting life, go ahead. Knock yourself out. Gossip until your lips fall off. Whisper and lie and make up the most fabulous fabrications that your shallow head can muster. Stalk, compete, and hate to your jealous heart’s content. Whip up drama and storm about and indulge in infantile histrionics until you pass out from lack of oxygen.

Carry around your absurdity and melodrama everywhere you go. Wear it like a cloak. Caress it and adore it. It makes no difference to me. I am not interested in you or it. Bring it. I won’t take it. It’s your burden to fondle, and I am above it.

In the meantime…I willfully choose to be happy. I choose to take my husband’s hand, continue to build our life together, create even more memories with him. I choose love, happiness, growth, discovery, and hope. My priorities include only my loved ones, my family, my peace.

We have one shot at life. Why waste so much of it on meaningless drivel? It’s sad. I won’t do it. I love life. I love my husband, my stepkids, my family. I love myself. I won’t disrespect them or myself by frittering away the precious few moments we have together on abject silliness.

That is likely the biggest difference right there: because of love, I value, I cherish, I savor. Without love — and it’s not terribly surprising when some people end up bereft of it, given that they never dispense it on anyone but themselves– then what is left to treasure and honor beyond frivolity and foolishness?

Crave Peace

Blame it on getting older. Blame it on maturity (hey, anything is possible). Or maybe chalk it up to life experience and reorganizing my priorities. But I simply want to be happy these days.

There is so much ugliness in this world, so many people eager to hurt others, destroy, gut, and ravage anyone and anything they can. It makes me pull away, retreat to my own peace.

I prefer the comfort and happiness of staying home with my husband over the idea of going out, crowds, noise, unpleasantness. I have so many interests, so many things I want to learn and create, and I would rather spend my time on that than the mindless and increasingly vapid attention-whoring of the world around me.

I say: keep your drama. Argue with yourself. I don’t have time or interest in any of it. Gossip with other small minds, and leave me out of it.

The older I get, the more I see the deeply etched impacts of negativity, lack of appreciation, raging immaturity, complete lack of introspection, and obsessing over meaningless trash. It’s not pretty. I don’t want to be like that.

I want to focus on improving myself, improving my life, being a better person to the ones who I love and who deserve my best. I want to focus on what matters to me and the people I hold close to my heart. Why would I waste time or energy on anything else? Why does anyone?

Last Home Game

160197981 I woke up this morning like any other day, not realizing at first that today is actually a special day. This evening, my husband and I will suit up in team colors for my younger stepson’s very last home high school football game.

I have the schedule posted on our refrigerator, so I don’t know how this fact escaped me until I was getting ready for work this morning. My husband and I were joking around, messing around, like we do every morning as we get ready for the day, and he mentioned the game tonight. I told him I think tonight is the last home game, and then it really hit me: it’s not just the last home game of this season. It’s the last home game, period.

My stepson is a senior, so this is his last year playing for this team. (He deserves better, anyway, since this team’s roster is full of inflated egos, drama kings, and big mouths not backed up with substantive talent.)

Even so, it’s just odd to know this will be our last drive to this school’s stadium for a game. This will our last time finding our seats, the last time our butts will warm the bleachers, our last half-time, the last time we will pack up our seat cushions after the game and climb down the steps to head home.

It’s sad, actually, because my stepson hasn’t played in weeks, thanks to a knee injury. This is not what any of us imagined for his senior year of playing football.

For some reason, after the doctor prescribed physical therapy, it took nearly two weeks for any meaningful action to be taken to schedule that first session. Personally, if he lived with us, I would have called that same day to schedule his first session, because it’s important. I suppose not everyone’s priorities are the same as mine, though. As it is, since nothing has gotten better since that doctor appointment weeks ago (surprise, surprise), he won’t be playing the rest of the season.

It’s not the same when he’s not playing. I love football, but our favorite player is on the sidelines, with no hope of returning to the field. On top of that, I know he is upset and disappointed, and there’s just not a whole lot I can do to help him with that.

Tonight’s game will be odd, just knowing that everything we do is the last time we will do it, at least at this stadium. Of course I knew this day would come, had years to prepare for it, so why does it seem like it sneaked up on me and blindsided me?

Now

blogger-image--1328307765 Losing someone definitely changes your perspective on things. I won’t be a drama queen and pretend that my friend’s daughter who recently died was my best buddy, or that we were super-close, or like family. We weren’t. But the shock of someone so young, so bursting with potential, being here one day and gone the next, punched me in the gut and got me thinking.

Every day, I see so much precious time wasted on petty, stupid, immature crap that doesn’t mean a damn thing. Over the holidays, one of my brothers, whose middle name may as well be “Nitpicking Trouble-Maker”, complained repeatedly about other relatives, as if he deserved a Purple Heart for enduring their company. And as if his own company doesn’t occasionally require a steady supply of Tums and vodka.

I told him that as I get older, I just don’t have the stomach for more fighting, bickering, inflicting pain just because. Now, don’t get me wrong. I will slap someone into next week for starting crap with me. But I have no interest in whipping up drama or stirring anyone’s pot. I prefer to just be left the hell alone.

The most glaring example is Psycho. Her obsession with me has cost countless moments with the kids, when she could have been spending real time with them instead of badmouthing me, grilling them about me and their father, or hunching over her phone to stalk me online. Moments that she could have been a mother, instead of nothing but a jealous ex. Making that choice every day to be the latter, and willingly rejecting the former, is heartbreaking.

I value my time with the kids. I make the most of it. I want to be sure they are getting something meaningful out of it. I barely look at the computer when they are here, and sometimes things go undone because I decide that being with them is more important. I can’t imagine barely acknowledging their existence so that I can devour a blog, no matter whose it is.

That is time Psycho will never get back. That is time that the kids are well aware they are not a priority, or even close. I don’t want to do that to them.

There’s been so much going on lately, it’s almost impossible for me to unwind when I get home from work. I caught myself sitting with my husband the other night, our arms around each other, but my mind wandering miles away, worrying about this, planning that…I thought to myself, “STOP.” Because I need to be here, with him, right now. I wouldn’t ever be able to get that moment back, that loving, tender, gentle moment, just him and me. Why would I want to miss that?

I focused on him. On us. The way it should be.

Everything else can wait sometimes. Otherwise, I am cheating myself of NOW. And I refuse to do that anymore.