Sanity-Saving Saturday: Prioritize

Hello, readers!

I'm sorry that for two weeks, I kind of dropped off the face of the Earth. It was a pretty hectic two weeks.

I know that I promised to do the "Sanity-Saving Saturday" series every Saturday until travel season was over, but I missed last week's. This ties into my Sanity-Saving tip for today:

PRIORITIZE

This seems like a pretty obvious tip, but when you're super stressed and at the brink of losing your sanity, this becomes more important than anything else.

Prioritizing requires sacrifices. Lots of them. So even though it sounds simple, I've got some confessions to make that will probably horrify you:

• I haven't done laundry in over 3 weeks. I have 12 loads to do today before I leave tomorrow.
• My carpet hasn't seen a vacuum cleaner in over two months (ewww...)
• I have not cooked anything outside of a slow cooker in two weeks.
• I totally missed doing September's Highlights series. Whoops!
• Matt has been really good about doing our dishes, but I realized this morning it's been 10 days since I last did a load of dishes myself
• Grocery shopping has not happened for 3 weeks...
• For a full week, I survived on 4-6 hours of sleep per night, as I was either working or doing homework every minute of every day
• Aside from reading on an airplane, I haven't opened a book in 2 weeks.
• My apartment is a disaster, and I haven't bothered to clean anything up in an extremely long time.

This is horrifying. I've confessed to you all before that I'm no weekend warrior; but this? This is ridiculous. Why, might you ask, is my life like this?

I have a full-time job that I love. During the fall, I travel a lot and have to manage the office while on the road. This translates to 50-70 hour workweeks and extended periods of absence from home (which makes it pretty darn hard to clean at home!).

I had a grueling 8-week grad school class. When I wasn't working, I was doing homework. The class required a pretty hefty time investment. My balance got off a little when I went to a conference for work; next thing I know, a domino effect caused me to fall behind on everything--and right before finals week for my class.

Some people tell me there is no excuse to not have a hot dinner on the plate and a messy house. I don't believe them, and neither should you. Life is about balance, which sometimes requires sacrifice. I am not going to sacrifice my 4-6 hours of sleep to clean the apartment; is it really that important?!?! 

Not compared with spending time with a loved one, maintaining a positive mindset, and enjoying the blessings and relationships life has to offer.

So, for those of you on the brink of losing your sanity: you are not alone. Prioritize what is important to you, and ignore the rest of your "to-do" list. It can be done another day. You'll get around to it when your plate clears off a little bit. In the meantime, live your life :)

Happy Saturday, readers!