Trimming the Fat

Ever since summer ended and the school year began, I’ve been insanely busy. I have a full course load, a part-time job, a web editor position, and a new job I start in roughly two weeks. This is just everything I have going on in my academic and work life – not that I have a lot going on in my personal and social life save for one major development, but it’s still a lot to handle!

I’ve decided that now is as good a time as any to start cutting down on my responsibilities in life and to begin prioritizing, both online and offline. I’ve always been fairly good at prioritizing, and now I have to look at everything I am currently involved in and try and put them in some sort of priority-oriented list so I can figure out what can stay and what has to go. I want to try and “trim the fat,” so to speak, because if I don’t I’ll be stretched too thin and that’ll only lead to disaster. I like being busy, but I dislike being overly stressed. I already don’t have the time to write¹ or read books of my own choosing, I really only see my friends during mealtimes², and I am barely finding the right amount of time to focus on the aforementioned major development in my personal life!

I’ve made a few decisions as to what to do offline already, such as only remain active in the organizations/clubs that I truly feel passionate about rather than am merely interested in as well as not commit to anything more than I can handle in the future. In terms of my offline life, I’m looking at cutting down what time I spend on message boards. I’m also leaning towards quitting the q*bee as it’s just one more commitment that I know I can’t keep up with.

All of these ideas as to what fat to trim are still mainly ideas at the moment. I’m still working on sorting what is important, what is extra, and what is necessary in my life. There have been a lot of changes in a short amount of time, some of them unexpected, and now I have to adjust my life accordingly. It’s not going to be easy, but I know it must be done.

1. I have not touched my work-in-progress novel since I left for school in mid-August. [↩]
2. My friends and I are all super busy; we only really have the time to sit down and talk during meals because otherwise we’re too busy doing work. [↩]

Cross-posted from breakthesky.net. Please leave any comments there.