Adam Blatner

My guardian angels are reminding me through many channels that I’m gonna die. My days are numbered. Maybe 4, maybe 4,000, maybe 40,000. So consequently—there’s a word I haven’t used for a good long while—I need to prioritize. In other words, what’s my bucket list? Not easy, but not that hard, either.

First, keep on keepin’ on, daily tasks, lovin’ Allee, doing as I did today—gave blood (I’ve been doing that every several months for many years!); going to the chiropractor (about once a year on average—though mainstream medicine doesn’t accept chiropractors—; shopping at the grocery; etc. Second, keepin’ on with family and friends, being part of the human community, singin’, dancin’, walkin’, bloggin’—that’s one thing they didn’t do in the olden days.

Then this morning a painful low-grade reckoning: Some things that are sort-of-priorities are not in fact high priorities, and guess what: Now’s the time to recognize that! Awww, man! There are things that I do that I sort of care about and other things I care about more and sometimes the sort-of short term outweighs the more important but I’ll get around to it later. Later is running out on me!

This is approaching me from many angles. There are people and places and activities that are second and third-tier priorities and several that are fourth tier but I treat them like first-tier when they are in my attention field. I’m mushy-brained about prioritization, you see. I’ll get around to it, and do it all. Yeah!

I feel all virtuous about the many things I don’t waste my precious time on: Television shows, fan magazines, following celebrities, traveling all the great places and seeing what there is to see. But I fall prey to pride and self-sacrifice: Those lower priority things are illusions, not sacrifices. No big loss. But what about when I sorta-kinda like something—the middle range? Now we’re wrestling with priorities.

I’ll confess that I’m not altogether ready to deal with all the implications here. They have to do with divesting, in a way, only of whole complexes and roles as well as “stuff.”