I've been having difficulties with this lately--staying balanced. In attempting to allocate my time to everything and everybody requiring it, I've been (to use my mother's circa-1970s phrase) "spreading myself too thin."
It's not intentional. I'm not going out of my way to try to be a Super Achiever. (I would, in fact, prefer to be an Unambitious Slug this week.) But I think this is the state of most 21st century women's lives: Really, really busy...almost all of the time.
So, if I volunteer an hour in my son's classroom today, do I also have time to make something for the school bake sale tomorrow? If I'm working on a newspaper essay due this week, when will I get my required novel writing done for the 70 Day Challenge? If I go to the gym to workout tonight, when will I do the laundry? (Or--she asks hopefully--does that mean I get to skip the laundry?! :-)
Anyway, I know I'm not alone in this. Just about everyone I've talked to this week (month...year...) has said something similar. There are simply too few hours in the day for all the things we're expected to do, so we need to make choices. My choice tonight? To read a novel or to clean the kitchen... Any guesses which one I'll pick?
3 comments:
Seems also that balance, rather than static, is a dynamic state, swinging back and forth between things rather than sitting quietly between them. So maybe you swing toward more writing one week and more volunteering the next - or, with the 70 day, that part DOES stay the same, and other things begin to swing around it, like bake sales and exercise.
HUG! spj
I always feel the pinch, too--usually at the time I've decided to devote myself to more intense writing goals--things just pile on. One extra hour about 8pm would be fantastic. Don't forget to take care of yourself during your marathon writing.
It's a tricky thing -- I certainly cannot seem to manage it, try as I might. And so I don't even try -- I figure out what the priority is for the next little chunk of time, be it an hour, or a day, or a week, or a project-length -- and that gets most of my attention, while the rest of the stuff gets a lick and a promise, as Trixie Belden's mom used to say. Of course, it also makes me crazy, so I don't recommend it unless you're really at your wits' end.
Maybe there's a reason that people call it a balancing ACT.
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