Take a second and think long and hard about your priorities in life.

Go ahead, I’ll wait.

This is just a static screen – I can wait forever. Forever watching; judging your lack of introspection.

You good? That work out? What came into your mind first? Family? Work? Friends? Ice Cream?

There’s a trap we tend to fall into, particularly in the age of social media, in which the fucks we give become spread too thin among things that deserve none of those fucks. We worry about retweets, about “engagement”, or about whether we sound a certain way to a certain crowd. Posturing is the norm and begins to overwhelm us in regards to the portions of our lives that should require the most fucks.

You dig where I’m getting or is this just an excuse to write ‘fuck’ a fuckton of times?

Both.

A big part of my 2018 (let’s be serious, this is probably something stewing since 2016) has been the assessment of my priorities in life, the ‘fucks’ I have to give. A sudden and obvious revelation was how much damage I did to myself placing emotional priority on what others thought of me in a completely abstract environment. This was trash. It affected the things in meatspace that mattered and seriously hindered the growth I experienced the past few years (I naively assumed would remain in place).

So how do we ensure the fucks we give are centered where they need to be? Well, limit them, fucko.

I’ve assigned myself 3 fucks. That’s all. They can be spread within their boundaries but that is all I’ll require.

Here they are:

1. My family (this includes general adulting to keep my family intact)
2. My health (I cannot do any of the other stuff without taking care of me)
3. Writing (not networking, not podcasting, and not platforming. WRITING)

And that’s it. I’ll work to stick to these three fucks. I do not and will not have other fucks to give. Does that mean I cut off non-competing priorities? Of course not, fuckstick. It means I won’t allow the non-essentials to tear my poor brain apart. The essentials need to be the focus and without the added encumbrance should be a lighter load (on some levels, mostly emotional).

I don’t believe this is fool proof or for everyone else but I do believe that this was my initial fuck load when I actually worked to be published for the first time. It worked then and going back to basics is already working for me now.

Give it a shot. Worst case, you realize you’re probably a lot more emotionally healthy than you realized. Best case: you offload a ton of stupid fucking bullshit.

You also get to say you have no fucks to give and mean it. That’s some special star stuff right there, let me tell you.

be easy,

Angel