I am so out of balance this week. Work has been very busy. I haven’t run. I hadn’t blogged (until now). I’ve played a few rounds of Farkle Frenzy with the kids but haven’t had any meaningful conversations with them. I just found out Rick Perry dropped out of the presidential race. Yesterday, a typical day this week, I woke up at 1:30 in the morning stressing about a work project. I didn’t fall back to sleep until 5. I got up again at 7, got a phone call at 7:55 about an interesting career opportunity, had a root canal at 8, was in meetings from 10 until 4:30, made a decision and a call about the career opportunity at 4:45, answered emails until 7, drove home, ate dinner and worked until 11. So how ironic that today I was the guest on Betty Everything sharing tips on balancing work and life.
I never look at balance as a daily thing. I prefer to look at my life on a weekly basis and carve out time for the things I want. Maybe I should expand that to a monthly view! The fact is, some weeks are better than others and most of the time I don’t worry about balance. It doesn’t exist, and it really doesn’t need to. The different parts of my life don’t need to be equally distributed – that makes no sense. I prefer to view life like the ocean tide. Sometimes I feel a gravitational pull toward some areas of my life and sometimes toward others. Life ebbs and flows and that’s the natural order of things. And even though I’ve had a tough week, and I feel out of whack right now, I know by Sunday my stress will recede – back out to sea, and I will return to my version of normal.
So perhaps I do know a little something about this work/life mix. You can listen to my interview on Betty Everything here, view my list of work/life balance tips at The Skinny Scoop. Or, better yet, tell me how you balance it all by adding to my list.
Thanks Kelley. My non-negotiable idea is based on Covey. Those are my “big rocks.”
Thanks for sharing. I don’t know if this is what you want but I wrote an article on parenting by your “True North” prioritizing. Here it is. If you like it could you add a link? This is how I find balance. http://kelleyward.hubpages.com/hub/Simplicity-Parenting