Are priorities supposed to be straight?

Lately this word has come up a lot. It ties in to that elusive balance I try to achieve. What are your priorities?

It's funny in a way that once you have a family and a house and a job, your priorities are pretty much set out for you. Not that having that stuff and balancing it is easy; it just seems easier to decide what's important to you.

No one is going to question you when you say your biggest priority is your child. Or paying your mortgage. But they might look at you a little funny when you tell them your biggest priority of the year is being a grocery store cashier. Or eating every Dairy Queen Blizzard of the Month.

But then again, who knows what kind of crazy antics of mine (or others like me) will turn into thousands of years from now? What makes sense? More importantly: Who cares? Just Be!

Radar Love

For whatever reason I woke up a few mornings ago and read my good friend's horoscope. It seemed to be pertinent to her--all about new learning opportunities and such (she just started school)--so I sent it to her. She emailed me back saying, "This morning I woke up thinking I should ask you to send me my horoscope."

Last night I thought: My boyfriend should start the dishwasher. Two minutes later, he did.

This morning I was listening to a really silly pop song while writing my sister an email. On a whim I included the name and artist of the song, thinking she might like it. She later told me that she had an 8 a.m. dance party because of my email.

My friend and I have a phrase for these sort of things: It's weird but it's not.

We are all connected. If you listen to the "weird" impulses in your brain and believe what to some is unbelievable, you can all become mind readers.

I counted 21 blessings in less than an hour

On Tuesday my girlfriend called me excitedly to tell me about the meteor shower that was happening that evening. She knew I was having a rough day (what's with Tuesday's anyway?) and thought This would definitely make her Tuesday. She was right.

Unfortunately for me, my new locale tends to haze up in the evenings. I looked out at the sky in vain; the clouds had rolled in. I tried to be optimistic: I can still feel the good energy raining down on me from the Universe. But oh how I wished I could see the magnificent display!

Wednesday night my roommate had had enough of looking at a screen, so we opted to sit outside and drink some beer instead of watching a movie. What a great idea. I saw 21 shooting stars. He saw 25. We were comparing: was No. 18 as good as No. 15? It was a beautiful evening.

I saw on the news today that the meteor shower can be witnessed for the entire week. This was after I decided to just be happy with the energy passing my way, not be sad about not seeing it, and got an unexpected surprise.

Life is like that a lot. Many times we give up on something or become negative about life because it's not handed to us exactly the way we thought it should be or expected it. But so many of life's blessings are not given to us wrapped up the pretty paper we want them to be.

There are so many cliches that encourage us to see how beautiful life is. Carpe diem! Live life to the fullest! Live every day like it's your last! Being a journalist, I tend to avoid these. But I think there's a reason they are cliches: They're true, and the people that believe them really believe in them.

Einstein was an optimist

Yesterday was my last day at F&C. At every job I've ever had, I've harbored these fantasies about telling people off, whether it be the customers or coworkers. Lately I'd been thinking it would along the lines of Half Baked: "Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! You're cool. And fuck you, I'm out!" But something kept me from doing it.

The first law of thermodynamics is that energy can't be created or destroyed. It just changes forms. I learned that in physics in high school. While most of our study dealt with energy of moving objects and such, I believe that this rule applies to the way we send out our energy as well.

Last summer a woman driving in Uptown almost ran my friend and I over in the crosswalk. And then she had the nerve to roll down her window and yell at us. I was furious. So when these guys cat called the two of us, I gave them the finger instead of just taking it as a compliment and letting it go. Looking back, I can almost see the negative energy flowing like a sick river through these interactions.

This is exactly why I decided not to tell my boss how I really felt about her and why I let go of my fantasy of telling a certain coworker where she could shove her attitude. Because energy is never created or destroyed, I prefer to send as much optimistic light as I can out there. In my experience it is much more difficult to change negative energy to positive, so I figure the less of it that's out there, the better. I feel like it's my little part of eliminating the pollution--like photosynthesis!