Balancing It All

I’m sure I’ve written about this topic before—maintaining balance—but never have I felt so strongly about its importance than I do right now in my life, mainly because things have been really crazy lately! There’s the usual stuff—work, being a single mom, having a social life. But lately I feel as if I’m not only trying to balance those things, I’m also trying to please everyone around me (while working full time, freelancing, helping to start a new business, raising my kid, maintaining friendships, having a social life, dating). What I’m finding is that while trying to balance everything in my life (this has never worked for me, by the way), I am wearing myself slap out!

I’m not sure I’ve ever had real balance in my life, though I’ve always strived for it. I’m that person who is often on the verge of grasping a little bit of that ever-evasive normalcy only to be pushed over the edge by the next “thing,” whatever that “thing” may be. And there is always another “thing.”

In college, I tried to balance several jobs at once, a boyfriend, and a social life (while trying to fit in a little study time now and again for good measure). After college, it was a race to get as far away from home as possible, so moving across the country with the boyfriend, finding a job (hour and a half commute both ways!), traveling, exploring, soul-searching. I spent a lot of those after-college years really trying to figure myself out—what I wanted, who I wanted to be with, where I wanted to be. (Just FYI: I still haven’t figured that stuff out.) I spent so much energy trying to “find myself” during that phase in my life that I think I might have missed a few things along the way (well, I am still single at the ripe old age of 36!). And moving into the “mommy” phase has really thrown me for a loop! Toss a baby into the mix that is my precarious life, and you can only imagine how difficult things have become to figure out. (But seriously, that kid is the absolute best thing that has ever happened to me! Love ya Kens!)

So my life now, while in a sprint to figure it all out and create some serious balance, is more uncertain than ever before. With everything that I have to juggle right now, I wonder: Does this thing we call life ever get any easier to figure out? Whew, I’m exhausted.