I was thinking about the bad things that happened to me this month and thought that now that most of them have been resolved, the problems didn’t seem so bad at all.  The other thing I realized is that I prioritized the situations in my life.

There were a number of things that I faced.

1.  Repair my generator

2.  Get my solar panels to begin tracking the sun again.

3.  Repair the battery monitor

4.  Exercise and diet

5.  Visit my family at Christmas.

6.  Finish correcting papers and give grades to my students for my online class.

At first both my class and the generator took priority.  So they were equal and were placed at number 1.  There wasn’t much sun, and when there was, I could always move the panels by hand.  I have a battery monitor that doesn’t have all the features of the other, so its repair could wait.  I continued to exercise.

My list looked like this.

1.  Generator and online class

2.  Exercise and diet

3.  Solar Panels tracking the sun.

Christmas approached and my priorities changed.

1.  Go to Santa Cruz and spend time with my family.  Forget all the problems back at home.

2.  Finish up my online class

3.  Exercise

4.  Repair generator

5.  Get solar panels to track the sun

6.  Get the battery monitor repaired.

So I went to Santa Cruz and put the problems at home on the back burner.  I finished up my class and exercised regularly.

When I returned home, I had added a new priority which was to begin a final edit of my book, A Warrior’s Son and finish writing the novel I wrote during November.  My priorities now looked like this.

1. Repair generator (Done in the first week home)

2. Repair tracking of solar panel.  (I did a follow up call to the manufacturer and sent the tracking parts to manufacturer for repair)

3.  Exercise (Started working out on the treadmill in addition to going to rehab)

4.  I’d sent the battery monitor off for repair before I left for Santa Cruz.  It came back and still didn’t work.  (They sent another connector cord.  I hooked the monitor to the new cord and the monitor worked.  I realized that there had to be a short in the conduit.  I took it apart and found a mouse had gotten in and created a short.  I took the conduit apart, replaced the cable, and the monitor now works.)

5.  Finish November book, Consequences

6.  Finish edit on A Warrior’s Son

Now that some of the items have been completed I have a new order.

1.  Get back on diet.  Be disciplined.

2.  Exercise

3.  Do a final edit on A Warrior’s Son (Went through the entire novel, noting my writing partner’s comments.  I wrote in Right (when I thought she was right), Maybe, and Keep in the margins next to her comments.  I also made a list of 20 major changes that needed to be made such as moving chapters etc.)

4.  Send chapters of Consequences to my writing partner in Reno for editing. (Will start working on the first 3 chapters, do some edits, and send them off to Sue [My writing partner] before the day (Sunday) is out.)

5.  Finish Consequences (61,121 words as of today.  I had 50,000 at the end of November)

6.  Repair solar tracker when parts are returned from the manufacturer.

7.  Begin working on Income Taxes.

What I have found is that everything will eventually be completed if one has patience, prioritizes, and continues to reorder the priorities as time and urgency change.

The only thing I don’t have on my list is clean out the storage sheds.  It needs to be done, but it isn’t a priority.  It may become one in the next few weeks or months.