I would rather schedule my priorities than prioritize my schedule.  That’s an easy phrase to put on a Power Point slide, but it is apparently not so easy to carry out under the pressures of real life.

During my early years in the Navy, my command’s Plan of the Day always took precedence over my personal priorities.  I did my best to balance the demands of the Navy with the needs of my family and the desires of my personal life … with only a small degree of success.

When my daughter was born in 1983, I was on an aircraft carrier operating off the coast of Lebanon.  In the days before e-mail and satellite phones, the best I could do was a Red Cross message.  It’s hard to express true joy and thankfulness in a telegram.  I did manage to talk my boss into granting me a week’s leave during our next scheduled port visit.  I flew home and introduced myself to my month-old daughter.

About fifteen years into my Navy career, a friend submitted his retirement paperwork and opened my eyes at the same time.  I asked him, “So you decided to retire, huh?”  He responded, “No, the law says we WILL retire.  I just decided WHEN.”

It hit me—at some point in the future the Navy was going to be done with me.  As we’ve seen in the recent recession, this attitude isn’t limited to the military.  No matter how hard you’ve worked, some day your employer may be done with you as well. 

We’ve known we needed a vacation for a while.  There just never seemed to be a right time, either because there was some big event at work one of us felt we couldn’t miss or we were just too darned exhausted to go anywhere.  That kind of thinking has kept us homebound since November 2008.  

 Until Kyle’s sister made us an offer we couldn’t refuse: come to Newport, RI with the rest of the family to see her get married.   That’s just one of the great things about family: when it seems like nothing else will do it, they help you get your priorities in order.