Ride My Seesaw

If anyone hands you a line about “balancing your life,” you can tell them I said shove it.

He’s just daring you to kick him. 

There is no balance in life. If you are juggling many tasks, one will suffer once you focus on another. This is not good or bad, it is life. And life is a continual shifting ride that goes round and round and up and down. One day, the gnarly old carnie reaches out his tattooed arm and yanks the start lever. Next thing you know, you are on the gravitron, where your main concerns are narrowed to keeping your money in your pockets and trying not to vomit.

At the moment, I am trying to accomplish three “big” things at once: keeping my children well cared for, writing my novel and exercising. Until wolfman was on the bottle, it was too hard to exercise around the kids’ schedules. When I got writing done, the dishes would pile up. When I got dishes done, I had no time to write. When I ignored my children, their whining became intolerable.

Now I have a fairly dependable schedule where I can start working out and for two and a half weeks, I did really well. I was also on top of the dishes, because I need to have clean milk cups every day. But then I was hit with a bit of writing mania and had to knock off a few chapters. Guess what happened?

My exercise came to a screeching halt. (More like a total wipe-out with cartwheels.) I was barely getting the dishes done on time for wolfman’s morning milk. The whining rose to a crescendo by Friday night.

So, I must ride the seesaw back down to earth and re-focus on exercising and the kids. I am going to go back one week on my workout challenges and start again today. Writing is something I can do when my other tasks are completed, or until the next time my legs can’t help but launch the ride upward again.

No, there will never be balance. The important thing is to keep your money in your pockets, try not to vomit and last, but not least, don’t fall off.