Sorting Out Priorities

Most of what I write here is the product of ideas that come to me all by themselves, but sometimes there are outside influences.

In this case, the outside influence is a blog post from a guy I've been following online for years now. The point he was trying to make is that he's undateable. He gives a lot of good reasons, and based on what little I know about the guy, I'm going to agree with them all, because, let's be honest, I've seen them to be true. Add to that the fact that I know that even if I had anything like rebuttals to them, I know they wouldn't work.

Let's also be honest here. I know that several of those reasons apply to me as well. Am I old and set in my ways? Well, I'm pretty much set in my ways, anyway. As I write this, I'm six weeks, more or less, from my 36^th birthday. I hesitate to say that I'm old just yet, but all the gray in my hair and eyebrows and on my chest may beg to differ with me.

As for quiet time, well, I'm home alone in front of my computer, wearing headphones and listening to some stupid old cartoon while I write one of the more self-centered things I've seriously considered posting. I guess that qualifies, because I could have found somebody to go out and do things with instead.

Am I honest? Don't know, not sure how much I really care anyway. I do know that I tend to say what's on my mind without really thinking about the consequences when I should. There have been times when it's gone badly for me, and I consider myself lucky that it didn't go worse than it did.

Do I think I'm better than other people? Believe it or not, no, not really. If I was really such hot shit, getting farther in life than I have might have been a little easier than it has been.

When we get right down to it, though, the biggest part of why I am where I am right now, in the condition I'm in is because of what my priorities have been over the last three dozen years. Those priorities have been towards doing what I wanted to do when I wanted to do it, and for the most part, I've been allowed to get away with it.

There have been consequences, naturally. There always have to be consequences. In my case, my choices have led me to be a middle aged fat guy with a low-level job who lives in a cheap apartment. Is that a bad thing? In some cases, yes. There have been proven negative effects on people's health when they're in the condition I'm in, which is why I'm trying to get myself back on track to taking at least some of the weight off. The basement apartment I live in probably isn't helping my health any, either. The air in here isn't especially great, after all.

My tendency to speak and post without thinking things through as well as I should has also been to my detriment. There are times when keeping quite and going with the crowd would have been more to my benefit than saying and doing my own thing, but out of habit, I've got this bad way of going with the latter, even when it's to my own harm. Maybe changing that habit should be a new priority.

In a lot of cases, it's debatable if my situation is good, bad, or otherwise. I was raised in such a way that my own happiness has been a high priority, perhaps a higher priority than it should have been. There are too many things I've never considered because I'd been too busy enjoying the here and now. Now that I'm not exactly what one might call young any more, I'm beginning to realize that a lot of those things are coming to bite me in the ass.

For example, I remember a conversation I had with my grandmother earlier this year. She said how she'd noticed that I'd really put on a lot of the weight I carry now when I was in college, working on my bachelor's degree, and wondered what happened while I was there. At the time, my only answer was some hand-waving bit about not enough promotion of physical activity. That's part of it, to be sure. Another part of it is that I like to eat way too damned much, and for most of the four and a half years I was working on that degree, I had easy access to all the food I could handle and then some. There are issues of self-control at play, too. I've got plenty of self-control, or at least that's what I've been told. It's just that when it comes to the food that I have such an affinity for, I was not effectively taught how to use it. The biggest factor? My parents wound up partially sabotaging their own efforts in that regard, as there were quite a few instances growing up where I felt as though there was an insistence that I eat more even when I was trying to indicate that I didn't want to.

Another example would be how that last paragraph came out. It ended on something I probably should have tried to talk directly to my folks about before putting it in this blog. The reason it turned out this way instead is because I've never been sure of how to bring such things up to them or how to go about discussing them. I might be able to speak what's on my mind, but I've always had trouble following through with elaboration. The reason for that is more a cultural thing, because here in the good old USA, we're taught to listen to and respect our parents. Mine are the sort of people who are able, and in fact quite willing to explain their points of view with every ounce of passion they had about a particular subject. In a lot of ways, that's a good thing, and it helped them raise me as well as they have. Unfortunately, one of the negative effects of that is that I never really learned how to speak up or defend myself very well when having proper face-to-face conversations with people. It's not for lack of things to say, or good ideas, or some inability to defend them. It's that a lot of those ideas wound up inadvertently, I would assume, blown out of the water almost as soon as they were presented because there was a hasty reaction that, while well meant, was often as badly-formed as any initial idea I might have had.

I suppose that ties into why I'm not only still single, but doing the kind of job I'm doing and earning the kind of income I am. I've always been more than a little scared to try, just out of worry about how my parents, who I love dearly, would react. I never quite get around to trying so many of these things because it seems like every time I have one of these ideas, I wind up hearing at least one little voice in my head that sounds like either my mom or my dad, thinking about something that might be fifty-three steps down the line. “What about this? What if that? Won't it be expensive?”

As a result, I learned to write when I had something to say, because it was the only way I could get the things I had to say out in the open without having to justify the first three words out of my mouth. I'm not going to place blame for that because, well, that's how I was brought up and I don't necessarily see it as a bad thing.

One big question that keeps coming up is if I'm happy with my life. This question comes from people who are close to me and also read my blog. For the most part, yes I am. If I really regretted choosing to stay home so I could play video games or watch stupid cartoons or write things like this, I'd make appropriate changes. I know there are people out there who would love to spend time with me and get to know me better than they do. I'm sure I'd like it just as much as they would.

I doubt I'll change very much, though. I know I've got to change some of my eating and exercise habits so I don't wind up blowing my legs out by the time I'm forty, and doing that has become something of a priority. I have, after all, seen just how long people in my family tend to live, and in spite of what some of them might say, another fifty years isn't as far out of the question as they might think.

As for the rest of it, I'm not sure when or even if I'll change that. It's not so much that I'm “undateable” or “unfriendable”. It's just that my priorities lie elsewhere, even if I'm not entirely sure where that elsewhere is. Figuring out where that elsewhere might be is one of those priorities.

Until I can get some of these things right in my head, that special someone who might be out there is going to need someone other than me, someone who can give them the attention they need and deserve. It's something I'm not able or willing to do simply because I'm happy enough with things being the way they are, for the most part.