Balance Part 1 (Day 110)

For the past few months, there's been one word that comes up in my internal monologue over and over again: Balance. I keep telling myself that I have to find the balance between work, and writing, and my health journey, and being a good wife, and having friendships, and ...well, everything else. Honestly, I've been so focused on getting balanced that I haven't been actually doing much of anything. I keep my living room reasonably clean, my husband reasonably fed (most nights) and then I get so overwhelmed with the idea of 'balancing' everything else out that I just sit down and crochet for a while so I can try to calm down and figure this thing out.

Not my piles, but mine are pretty similar

Which isn't balance, and also isn't terribly productive for anything except my crocheting hobby.

I've talked to a lot of different people about this balance deal. I've gotten a lot of different (really good!) suggestions. But for every suggestion I get, I end up with ten more things that are standing in the way. And all the while I'm sitting here, crocheting my little heart out, and begging myself to just get balanced already.

Today, I've had an epiphany: Maybe I don't have to be balanced.

Okay, so being permanently unbalanced is not healthy, not by a long shot. But maybe being permanently balanced isn't healthy either.

Thinking about it: Nobody looks at the mother of a newborn and says "Oh, sweetheart, make sure to balance that child's needs with the rest of your life." In fact, everybody knows that for the first few months, having a newborn means that you're going to be pretty unbalanced as a rule. You're not going to get much sleep, you probably won't get out much, and anything that requires higher brain function is probably getting tossed out the window for a while. (Those of you who have jobs and newborns must be demigods!) Everybody knows this, everybody understands it, and nobody thinks that a mother of a newborn should just get more balance in her life.

Why?

Because she has a new born! There's a brand new human being that she's responsible for and it can't do anything for itself. She has to devote every ounce of energy she has to keeping this thing alive and that means that everything else - even personal hygiene - becomes secondary (if it happens at all).

Maybe being the mother of a newborn isn't the only time that it's okay to be a little unbalanced. Maybe there are just times in life where everything else has to take a back seat to the one or two things that really, really matter for the moment.