Prioritizing Priorities: An apology and explanation

If you’re a consistent reader of Kaleena’s Kaleidoscope (giant Heimlich squeezing hug of thanks to you!) you may have noticed I’ve been mysteriously… absent lately, cropping up periodically only to post half-inspired little ditties and photos. I have been violating the first gospel of blogging, which is posting consistently and frequently. So smite me down, oh great God of Blog, for I have sinned! This post is an apology, an explanation, and a promise for future awesomeness.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ll admit that I’ve been a little bored and uninspired with this blog lately. While I have a bunch of fun travel related memories to write about, I feel a little guilty sometimes only writing about things of the not-so-recent past. I’d like to share the fun experiences of the present, too, but lately there simply haven’t been that many.

Don’t get me wrong, I live a pretty awesome life in general; but often times my days are just downright ordinary. I mean, I do ride a unicornpretty sweet bike to work sometimes, but often times the highlight of my day is when someone brings one of those giant popcorn tins to work and I go crazy on the caramel corn while checking out the cute delivery guy.

What it really boils down to, though, is a matter of time. While I do consider this blog a priority, I have several other priorities that have been taking, well, priority over it. My office job obviously gets first priority as I’m required to be there if I want to pay my bills (insert grand sigh and wistful gaze out the window for a rich man/winning lottery ticket).

What I’ve been spending the majority of my free time doing recently is aerial dance. Remember when I posted about “running away with the circus”? Well, I’ve stepped it up a notch and have been training 8-10 hours per week and just two days ago performed in a show with the Santa Barbara aerial company for the first time. This has meant dozens of bruises, rope burns, bloody feet, sore muscles, the general sensation of having been run over by a truck–and an exhilarating sense of pride and accomplishment. It has also sucked up most all free time and energy that I would usually devote to this blog and other things I should be doing (like learning Korean, trying to lose weight, learning how to code, maybe even attempting to date, etc).

For weeks I felt overwhelmingly guilty that I wasn’t accomplishing all of the things that I consider priorities; at the end of an exhausting day I would force myself to stay up through the night, staring at the computer in a zombie daze, unsuccessfully trying to force myself to absorb Korean or produce quality blog content.

But then it finally hit me: I can’t prioritize everything. Just because I have a laundry list of things that I want to accomplish and do doesn’t mean I can focus on all of them at once. I need to prioritize my priorities  and only tackle one thing at a time. I like to do things well, but that means devoting more time to whatever I’m concentrating on; in this case I chose to prioritize my aerial training, even at the expense of my blog, because I knew it would make me the happiest–and that’s okay. And with that realization, I released myself from the guilt that has been plaguing my conscience and I felt a great weight lift off of my shoulders. What is important is owning up to my decision and not beating myself up because I can’t be superwoman and do everything at once.

With that being said, I have a lot of big upcoming plans for life, and for this blog. While the next couple of months will remain fairly the same in terms of posting frequency (seeing as I’m going to be busy getting my life in order to move to South Korea), I do have quite a few fun topics and experiences to write about (Couchsurfing! Updates on the Santa Barbara Bucket List! Travel horror stories! Surf lessons!). I’m also working on a complete redesign of the blog layout, so you can look forward to some fun changes in the near future, too!

So, (for those of you who didn’t read this whole article and just scrolled through to the bottom to see if I gave some kind of grand recap) here is a grand recap:

1. Dear reader(s?), I’m sorry for not writing to you much lately
2.  I have been quite busy with being awesome at aerial dance
3. I discovered that I shouldn’t feel overwhelmingly guilty for neglecting this blog because sometimes you have to prioritize your priorities to keep your sanity
4. I have some exciting upcoming plans and this blog is going to return to a main priority soon
5. I love quiche. Not relevant to anything in this article, but just thought you should know. 

 

Now go drink some spiked eggnog! But before you go, tell me what you think of my explanation… or just a fun fact about yourself, because everyone loves fun facts.