The Steps Forward
Whenever life feels a bit hectic and I feel like I’m failing on several things all at once, I try to focus on the steps forward. The urgency of our commitments ebb and flow, jostled by our calendars and our deadlines. Nothing stays perfectly in balance for long. Achieving balance in life is not scales evenly weighted by precise measurements. It’s a spinning top that wobbles off equilibrium, but somehow manages to stay mostly upright.
I don’t believe in work-life balance the way we idealize it as a society. I don’t see how we can ever succeed at perfectly compartmentalizing everything in such a way that we never need to make decisions about what wins our focus in a given moment. Multiple things will always be tapping our shoulders at the same time, asking us to choose how we will spend our next hour or our next day. Our calendars may be linear, but life is not.
Some days and some weeks, work commitments take up more of my time. The paycheck kind of work that I thoroughly enjoy. And some days and some weeks, I have the space to fill my calendar with mostly things I do for myself. The non-paycheck work that brings me joy. Extra long runs and extra time to write, or a few uninterrupted hours for a hike in the woods. For me, that’s balance. A wobbly spinning top, dipping one way or the other for intervals of time.
The balance comes from not letting the top stay tilted any one way for too long. Because the heavily tilted top is more likely to crash and burn than the top with just a little wobble. The top in danger of crashing cannot spin that way for long before it falls over and stops. A top on its side, no longer able to spin, is probably burnt out. And I think we all know what it feels like to be that burnt out top. Too tired to dust ourselves off and get back to spinning.
I don’t want to be that burnt out top, so I do my best to pay attention to how I’m scheduling it all in. If I haven’t been able to read for a few days, I carve out a half hour the next morning to dive back in. If I have a hectic few days coming up at work, I plan for easy, shorter runs those days. My long run can wait for a day I have more time to get it done, and the space to properly refuel after. And if all the days suddenly feel hectic, then I figure out where I can pull back.
There is never time for all of it. Even if there were more hours in the day and we didn’t need any extra sleep, I still think I’d leave half of my things I’d like to do today lists unchecked. I’ve learned to be okay with that, and get my 7+ hours of sleep anyway. I’ve learned it’s okay to pull back on one thing to make space for another. And to never neglect something that makes you happy for too long. The things that make me happy help me stay a wobbly spinning top.
Reminding myself of where my equilibrium is is why I use the planner that I do. The one that lets me write in it with a pen, and keep so many things together in one place. It’s a calendar, a daily organizer, and has a page for remembering important dates. But it’s also a training log and a habit tracker, with pages for notes and monthly journaling prompts. In other words, it’s a tool that helps me keep track of which directions I’m spinning, and helps me wobble less.
Knowing where I’m at helps me focus on the steps forward when things feel hectic. My house may be a bit dirty and disorganized when it’s a busy work week, but the next week I’ll clean both bathrooms, the kitchen and bake muffins. I could have a couple weeks of less running in a row, but still know I’m getting out the door enough to maintain where I’m at. Those are all steps forward. And they are all both tiny, and huge.
The game of chutes and ladders is far more of a life metaphor than I ever realized as a kid. When you’re playing, it’s a seemingly endless journey of successes and setbacks. Sometimes one slide brings you to a bigger ladder. And sometimes you climb up only to end far below where you started. But even though they’re there, you don’t want to focus on the slides. Not unless you want to spend the whole game frustrated. Instead, focus on the ladders. All that climbing, and all those steps forward, will eventually get you where you are trying to go.
