I Am My First Priority: Intentions for Focusing on My Quality of Life

Hi everyone. I paged through The Goddess Journaling Workbook again yesterday and saw the first prompt: “I am my first priority”. Okay, I did write about it already back in 2020, but I think I need to revisit it and set intentions for putting myself first. I know, we are often taught, especially in more conservative circles, that we need to put others first (or after Jesus, but ourselves last, in any case). Then some more leftist folks teach us about self-love as if it’s about essential oils and vegan smoothies. Which it could be, but this is not what I mean. Rather, self-love means being true to our own values over those imposed upon us by others. And that doesn’t need to be selfish.

Now of course I need to determine my values. I’ll narrow those down to what my major point is for being in care, ie. my main goal. This is quality of life. This may be obvious to most people who aren’t involved in the care system and it should be obvious to those who are too, but for many, the presumption of competence or the need to manage daily crisis behavior clouds their vision towards quality of life. In fact, I’ve even seen one care agency state that their aim is to “maintain and where possible promote” quality of life in their clients. Well, this is wording I’d expect to go with “independence”, not “quality of life”, since truthfully, quality of life can always be promoted.

So what does quality of life mean to me? It means that I decide what I spend my limited energy on. This doesn’t mean lazing around all day doing nothing and it doesn’t mean I won’t ever improve on my ADLs at all either. What it means is that I take the lead, focusing on my daily level of energy. I told one of my staff the other day that I would prefer if she doesn’t tell me to do something independently, but rather invites me by asking me whether I want to do it independently. In that case, she’s much more likely to get me to actually do it, as I don’t feel the pressure of her expectation, because I can say “No” if I don’t have the energy at that point.

It also means that I decide what activities to do during my allocated activity time. In my current care home, I have been sometimes not even consciously adapting to staff’s preferences for activities way more than I feel comfortable with. For instance, I’ve been taken on grocery shopping trips for the staff’s personal needs under the guise of an activity more than a few times. I eventually put a halt to that, saying I would only go if I too needed something from the supermarket. Another, even more frequent, example is my playing endless card or dice games because I’m assigned a new temp worker who comes across like they’re just here to pass the time. Yesterday, I was assigned one of those and had had it with dice and card games, so I thought, screw it, we’re making a smoothie. It turned out absolutely delicious!

It also means being intentional with my unsupported times. This means rather than mindless scrolling, doing actual reading, watching or listening online. I fully intend on blogging or at least journaling more often. If I can stop caring about my stats, maybe I can post here more often based on self-help journaling prompts. I didn’t collect those books for nothing, after all.

It means being constructive in my relations to my staff. It means being honest about my needs. For example, if a staff member (usually a new temp worker) causes me emotional flashbacks with something they do or say, rather than just telling them I feel in distress, I will hopefully be able to ask for a more trusted staff to intervene for a few minutes (which isn’t the same as demanding I be supported by all trusted staff).

Finally, I will also be constructive in contributing to my crisis signaling plan once it is revised at the new care home. My plan dates back to sometime in 2021 I believe and was immediately thrown out by my former support coordinator here because “it doesn’t work at this home”. What “works” here, however, doesn’t work for me, but that doesn’t mean my plan will be fully useable at my new care home. I will try to understand the staff’s perspective when updating the plan, but will still put myself first.