My darling pequeno Stephanie, who is pursuing her MBA at CMU, mentioned something like this to me in an email today…

“Right now school is 1st priority…everything else is 5th. No 2nd, 3rd or 4th, just 5th.”

And this had me thinking (you can leave me thinking drinking all night…cause that’s the sharpest nail)

My best asset-worse problem conundrum to resolve is the fact that I put LIFE as 1st priority and everything else which should be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th seems to become a co-priority for 1st place. And this is the one thing I love MOST about myself and at the same time cannot reconcile with myself, depending on my borderline mood of the moment.

This year school is my 1st priority- sharing the top honors with life of course.

Work is somewhere a distant 5th-depending on if the girls had a terrible morning and I have to stay late to fill out incident reports when a resident threatens to make me regret giving out restrictions and *vows on her daddy’s grave to get my white ass in the morning* Then of course, school takes a 2nd place to work.

SEE THE PROBLEM. Alas. I am a juggler by nature, a rationalizer a compromise maker who SO FAR still ends up succeeding. I make sure that PEOPLE are always a co-1st priority, sometimes to my own detriment. I mean if I got hit by a car tomorrow and ended up in the hospital would I regret the fact that fell behind on my school work for the weekend…or that I did not get a chance to spend time with friends out of town?

Alas. My life and past has shown me that you need NEED to make sure to make the moments count. Geez, my 30th birthday is upon me….and I look at my mom, and realize that she was a WIDOW with two teenagers at the AGE OF 34! I most likely will not even be engaged to be married in 4 years! MUST LIVE LIFE when given the chance…however I am finding myself right now at the crossroads that I HATE…the one where I have to NOT be flybytheseatofmy pants Jen and actually STAY home to do work. The next part of my life demands it. And the next part of my life has a VERY LOUD way of sharing itself with me. I am finally, for the first time in 3 years actually WILLING and excited to begin that next part of my adult life. I’m not used to feeling this way, no co-priorities right now. (Unless something insane happens with the family, because of course it is about that time for something big to happen.) God, how am I EVER going to make it through the bar exam this summer? Little Jenny is trying to grow up. How nice. At least I am still wearing pig-tails.