Hey MMers,

How was the month of March for you? Some of you are probably experiencing Spring right now, while some folks I know are being vaccinated and looking forward to normalcy again.

February left me full of emotions. During March, I recuperated and cleared out all the negativity around me, which had been piling up after a certain dramatic incident in February (a story for another day).

Sorting out my emotions made me realize that some of the tasks I have been juggling are growing out of proportion. For example, one of my clients used to order assignments that take up 20% of my time weekly. However, because of a surge in his publishing business during the pandemic (more folks are staying at home; hence more are reading online), I am now experiencing a 40% increase in incoming orders.

Another example concerns my daughter. Since I homeschool her daily, there is a sudden need to increase mental stimulation activities for her, possibly a growth spurt here. However, I still find myself sometimes struggling to keep up creating new activities that challenge her. Therefore, I decided to increase our sit-down lessons from 1.5 hours to 2 hours, sometimes even more.

There will be a change in my time allocation shift, which means April will be the month for me to sort out my priorities.

Talking about priorities, we need to constantly evaluate them in our lives, especially in our career needs. Our needs and wants may change over time, which may alter our career preferences as well.

A friend of mine adores travelling around the world, so she jet-set as a flight attendant in her early twenties. She achieved her priorities of gaining experience and collecting memories through her carefree moments as a frequent flyer. During her mid-thirties, she was in a committed relationship. Her preferences changed to having stability in her life, so she switched to being an account manager that still required some business travel twice a month. She strikes a balance between her thirst for travel and her need to nurture a healthy relationship, which was both her priorities. In her late forties, being a happy wife and mother of three, her preferred choice is to spend more family time. Hence, she cut back her hours, changed to a less demanding role, and chose to travel only for pleasure. Her family is now her priority.

We need to evaluate our career needs every three years. Anything can impact or change your needs towards your job. However, I have realized that the major impacts usually include:

  • Industrial changes

Perhaps the role is becoming obsolete due to technological influences, or there is a shift towards government protocols in your role.

  • Milestones

Lifetime milestones like marriage, relocation, and children may affect how you view your career. You may want to travel less or earn more to meet the needs of your newly acquired lifestyle changes.

  • Purchases

Are you doing a degree, buying your first house, or maybe changing a new car? Those are substantial financial commitments to get ready for. If you are not making as much as you can to cover these expenses, then you should look at the reasons preventing you from making such.

  • Company Changes

Got a new change in management or perhaps a change in your superiors? Does that change impact your work? Will this change hinder your promotion or give it to you quicker? If you are going to put in all your effort, this is something serious to think about.

  • New Discovery

The last significant impact that you need to consider is discovering something new about yourself. With time, we evolve with new experiences, new people, and new places. Even as I picked up my old hobby in scuba diving, I was tempted to see if this returned passion can be made into a career like a diving instructor.

With that, I guess you should be thinking about when the last time you evaluated your career path was. I will leave you in deep thoughts as I get busy sorting out my priorities.

Until the next article, stay laughing and beautiful!

Signing Off,


Kally@MiddleMe.net

41 replies on “April is A Month to Sort Out Priorities”

  3. I’ll be starting my new job on Tuesday, and it really feels like everything lined up perfectly. I have the experience they need (records management, destruction projects, paperless transition). I even have an inside connection: when I arrived for the interview I recognised the receptionist from a previous job!
    Several years of study and previous work experience, and of course a bit of luck, have come together perfectly. But it feels slightly strange to be enjoying this good fortune when so much is still messed up due to covid.
    I had a similar experience in 1990. When I first moved to Perth I lived in a caravan park and my neighbours were a family doing it tough. We got along pretty well, but I didn’t intend to stay in that situation. A couple of months after I arrived I found a place to live; when I told the neighbours the news they basically said ‘Well, that’s nice’. After that until I moved out, they had very little to say to me.

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    1. Best of luck on your new job, Gregory. I’m very sure you’ll do wonderfully. Isn’t it good to come to a full circle? I think the stars are aligned on this for you.

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  5. Thanks for sharing…My April comes with a busy schedule. One of them being …taking Online classes which I had stopped due to unavoidable circumstances. Hoping I will succeed this time round to finish.

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  6. For me April is the month of beig change too. I have sorted my priorities and I am retiring later this month. So now it is just sorting paperwork and looking forward to a life where I choose what I do and when. I can’t wait. Enjoy sorting for the better Kally.

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  8. So true, I remember when I finished college, I decided to live far from home. But after some year, it didn’t make sense anymore. My priorities were to live near my family again, and I decided to change my career in order to fulfill my new necessities. Take a look in my work if you have time on namelesssproject.wordpress.com. Thanks for sharing your ideas with us.

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  9. “Our Lord has written the promise of the resurrection, not in books alone, but in every leaf in spring-time.” Martin Luther
    Always wise advice here and it is appreciated. 😉 Even at my age (69) I have to continually evaluate my priorities. C.S.Lewis said, “You are never too old to set another goal or to dream another dream.”
    So my dreams are shorter now than when I started my construction company back in 2001, and less adventurous than when Anita and I went to Mongolia to teach at MIU for a semester, and more practical than when I climbed out of Purgatory Chasm in R.I. in my 20s and found myself reaching up to rocks that were further out than I was!
    But they are still dreams of giving someone, anyone reading my blogs, a sense of purpose and perspective on life, as yours do. My prayer is that someone may be moved closer to The God Who Is Here than they were before they read it.
    Love your daughter and husband faithfully and utterly, and I will look forward to hearing about your “dramatic incident” in February. ❤️&🙏, your friend always, c.a.

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    1. We seem to have the same priorities, capost2k, at least the same reason for blogging – to bring others closer to God. (For me, by giving them “divine perspective.”) My life has been through so many stages – so many “adventures” – and although I still have adventures, they are the closer-to-home kind, or even on-line overseas kind. (God can do all kinds of things via the internet.) My assignment now seems to be writing about past adventures and what should be learned from them. (I used to think that if I ever had time to write out all my stories, I would be writing for years, even without any new material.)
      Since we are all unique, none of us can tell another what his/her priorities should be, and because of our unique journeys, even our own priorities are (should be) constantly reevaluated. Which is good. It keeps us praying, rather than being “on automatic.” 😉

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      1. James 4:11-12 would agree wholly with you, as do I.
        I look forward to reading your stories. ☺️
        And my full legal name IS C.A.Post; all my friends call me “c.a.” but you can call me His Holiness, Mr. Post. 😂😂

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  10. When you retire and everyday feels like Saturday, some of your decisions include what to do today, which order not to do them, and why the heck am I doing them anyways. Today it’s a case of who invited Winter back?

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    1. I’m retired, too, and some days I feel the need for someone telling me what to do now! On the other hand, though I sometimes seem to be going in circles, at the end of the day I look back and realize I got most or all of what I planned done.

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  13. Kally, your discussion of priorities shows how our life journey brings necessary changes. When I look back, my career in education had to survive life changes: marriage, relocation, children, and changes in my work assignment. It always helps to remain patient and keep breathing (easier to say now at age 65).

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  18. Sounds like you have your hands full with working on your projects and homeschooling your daughter as well as writing MiddleMe, Kally. That’s good you were able to clear out the negativity from February.
    This is good advice about the importance of evaluating one’s career constantly and sorting out priorities and goals. I think I could have been more strategic with my priorities when I was younger.

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      1. You’re welcome, Kally. I’m actually in Taiwan as I reside here (I was working in HK the year before). Things are ok in Taiwan, though you probably heard of the train tragedy recently. I last went back to TnT in 2017.

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    1. Big hugs! It’s natural! You’ll learn to juggle one thousand and one things at the same time. Including walking around like a sleepless zombie.

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