The Pendulum of Balance

You've heard it before: balancing work life with family life is not fun, not easy, and--some days it seems--not attainable.  Yet, we strive.  I'm the mother of a 7th-grader, a kindergartner, and a 3-year-old: all boys, each his own little man.  I also work full time at a career in publishing, which I love.  I am a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, an aunt, a friend, and a pain in the ass.  

But, my main focus these days is on balance.  What I have come to learn over the years is that the "super mom" I grew up believing is as fictional as any other super hero.  And I say this not because a woman cannot successfully balance her career with her family, but because to do so means just that: BALANCE.  It does not mean that you will be a super mom and a super employee/worker.  It means that, on balance, you will give equal attention to each.  That is by no means a small task.  In essence, it is saying that if you go too far in one direction, you may be risking a deficiency in the other.  And, more painful and difficult to accept, that's OKAY.  As long as you spend some time doing the same in the reverse, you will live a balanced life... Promise.

What this realization has led me to, then, is that this idea of balance is applicable to almost anything that causes a struggle for me.  Eating? Better to balance my plate, my diet, my habits than to starve or over-eat, or eat too much protein or carbs, or to skip breakfast, or to have 6 cups of coffee, or to have no coffee at all.  Be reasonable.  This is a daily struggle.

Work?  It's ok to throw myself into a complex project, as long as I build in time to do the mundane tasks like scheduling, expense reports, data analysis, etc.  And, by the same token, I need to make sure I have a project to throw myself into or the rest of those very important administrative tasks will not only take over my day and suck the happiness out of it, but they will not be informed by anything; doing those in a vacuum are as useless as not doing them at all. They need to be done in the context of my knowledge of what is currently needed.  I can't be a good manager of people if I can't do the work that they do, and I can't do the work that they do if I don't also know how these have changed through their eyes.  Balance.

So, this blog will serve as one brick in the wall that is balance for my life, which is to write about something that isn't my job.  I need to work on my creative writing so that my technical writing is better.  So that my thoughts aren't caged.  So that my plans are laid out and can more obviously be broken.  I need to work the depths of my mind so that my mind can relax. Balance.