Setting priorities is an act of self care

For years I've wanted to take a yoga class. I bought a book and did poses at home. I watched DVDs and did Pilates, which uses yoga moves. But I never took a class.

When I was pregnant, I swore I was going to do pre-natal yoga to prepare my body for labor. But I never got around to it. I was generally too tired to think about it and as the pregnancy wore on I sleep became more and more of a priority.

Speaking of priorities... In November I joined a small group of women for a Personal Renewal Group. To those of you who have known me for many years, yeah, I know, it totally doesn't sound like me at all. Before I had a kid if I'd heard of this sort of thing I probably would have snorted, said something vulgar and made fun of women who did this sort of thing. (I apologize to all the women in my group, I think you are all lovely and strong women.)

We are reading this book called, A Mother's Guide to Self Renewal and we have been going through one chapter a month, learning how to better care for ourselves because as so often happens with moms, we forget that we are people with needs.

So yeah, I was talking about priorities.

I have realized lately that I am prone to some ADD tendencies. I'm pretty sure I don't actually have ADD. But I grew up in an unorganized and often chaotic household, which brings me to my point, lest I get distracted and start babbling like I often do.

This month in the PRG, we talked about setting priorities.

I read the chapter the day before our meeting and when I read it, I felt like the floodgates of knowledge opened up in front of me.

Right.

If you want to get certain things done, you have to put them in order of priority.

Oh, yeah.

An old and dear friend of mine and I used to have this joke, "If you want to get things done, you have to do them." It seems I forgot that lesson somewhere in between getting pregnant, giving birth and becoming known as mommymommymommymommy.

Even though I knew that a lot of my priorities were getting pushed to the wayside, I didn't know exactly why.

It was because I am easily distracted and often I think that if I can't get to it one day I'll do it the next. Then the next day comes and the same thing happens.

Like I said before, I'm easily distracted. I don't think that's going to change. At least, not anytime soon.

Since I started writing this post, I've checked my e-mail. Posted two messages to an online forum. Made a phone call. Gone outside about 15 times to check on a sleeping toddler in the car.

But I always came back to writing this post. Because, as hopefully you, my loyal reader(sss?) will see, this blog is one of my new top priorities.

Heh, heh, heh.

You are probably wondering why I'm smirking.

Yeah. I'm distracted, but I'm going to let you see just how easily I can get out of touch with reality unless I have a good priority list.

I started to write this post about a yoga class I started last night.

So much for priorities. I will do it tomorrow.

I will.

I will.