I heard from my dad early this morning that my mom's surgery went well this morning. She'll probably stay at the hospital a couple more days but should be home by the time I get there on Saturday. Yay!
Now back to our regularly scheduled shallow post about pop culture. :)
So I caught up on 3 nights of Rock Star:INXS today. The Sunday show, which is now on VH1, then last night's performance show, which was amazingly good, and tonight's results show. A fun way to spend an evening. Since they all had to perform in a "stripped down" way (if a string trio in the background can be considered stripped down...), it sounded a little more like "American Idol" than I expected. Jordis did a really gorgeous version of "Knockin' on Heaven's Door" but it just wasn't a rock song - it sounded very pop diva-ish. And surely Marty got some pity votes for having to sing a Britney Spears song, because I didn't think he did as good a job as the votes would indicate. But the true show-stealer last night was MiG. He usually seems quite bland to me, but he did such a moving version of "Baby I Love Your Way" that I'm actually going to buy it on MSN Music. It even made Dave Navarro/Mr. Rogers get all choked up. I swear that man's image is going down the toilet. Next thing you know he's going to host "Evening Magazine" or some other fluff because no one will take him seriously as a rock star after this show.
In addition, I watched So You Think You Can Dance, the latest cheese-fest from the producers of American Idol. I'm such a sucker. But ever since I saw "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" as a kid, I looooove watching good dancers dancing to contemporary music. (Still not much of a ballet fan, except for our family tradition of going to see The Nutcracker every Christmas - thanks Amma!) The dancing was really fun to watch, and TiVo makes it really easy to skip over the looong commercials, stupid comments by the contestants (shut up and dance already!) and the annoying hostess. Ryan (I think that's his name), the breakdancing kid from LA, completely blew me away with the amazing mambo routine he and Melissa(?) did. That was well worth the 2 hour show! (With Tivo it was more like 45 minutes, anyway. God Bless TiVo.)
And now for something completely different...
I did some serious thinking today. I'm at a point where I have a lot of conflicting priorities in my life, and it's only going to get worse: work, school, family (including Spike and Peanut), friends, home (wifely stuff), and trying to get in better shape. I've always tried my hardest to succeed at everything and make everything I do a number one priority. But honestly, I just can't do that anymore. I'm no longer at a point in my life where one thing is the clear priority (for example, when I was a full time student, or just a single gal working at Deloitte).
I'm not doing a great job of balancing everything and I can just feel the stress building up inside. I can't be my best self, or do my best work, in every aspect I mentioned above. So I'm making some hard choices:
1. Losing weight and getting back to regular exercise is one of my (real) top priorities now. I've been trying to do this for 15 years (half my life!) and the amount of time I have wasted on this effort makes me cringe. I don't want to keep pretending to do this for the next 20 years. I need to just buckle down, do the work, and get it under control now. So forgive me if this blog becomes a journal for my weight loss program and an outlet for my whining about it. Someday that project will be complete :)
2. If I get in to UW Bothell, I'm going to defer enrollment until Winter or Spring Quarter 2006. I just can't take on more responsibilities now, as much as I really want to learn more computer science. At that time I will re-evaluate why I want to do it, and whether it's worth the sacrifices I'll have to make.
3. I am going to focus more on doing a great job at work, in my current role, but I am also conceding that I don't want to become a VP. I've been told in the past that I have leadership potential, which is great to hear, but I'm just not willing to sacrifice everything else to get there. If my performance is good enough to warrant leading a small team, that would be great, but my main focus will be on my current position and how to be great at it and stay challenged in the long term, rather than always keeping my eye out for what's next.
This one is especially hard for me since I've always been taught to strive for the next level and prepare for my future. But honestly, I think I've arrived there already. I love my current job - it's a perfect fit for me. The team I'm on is fantastic, and the culture, benefits, and financial rewards for working at Microsoft are better than I ever could have imagined when I started working in the real world 6 years ago.
If I can follow through on these three things, I will be much less stressed out all the time, and can more fully participate in my life with TJ, the dogs, and our friends and family. That's the stuff that counts, isn't it?
I hear you about the hard choices. I keep trying to tell myself I only get one life, and thus should focus on what I want to do to make myself happy. I guess that sort of decision-making is harder when you're not single and need to consider someone else (in addition to your family). Anyway, best wishes with everything.
ReplyDeleteThanks Suz! Being with TJ hasn't made it that much more difficult to balance things - it's more the responsibilities we have w/ the house and dogs. I guess there's a little bit of making sure we spend time together without being stressed out but he's pretty low maintenance in general :) For big decisions, though, it's definitely more of a factor - like where we live, or if we change jobs, etc.
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