Work. Life. Balance. What?

Last night was the second night in a row where we had no electricity. We weren’t the only ones. Hurricane Irene had punched her way through, leaving bruises behind. We were one of the lucky ones – no significant flooding, no damage, no one was hurt. Only a loss of electricity.

With that loss of electricity however, I couldn’t work. Couldn’t check emails. Couldn’t work on deadlines. Couldn’t get anything done. Plus, the trains into the city in our area where also non-functional. For a day.

You would think the stress and tension that started to build up was a result of multiple days of this situation (as I write this there are people who still don’t have power, where as we now do). You would think we had so much to deal with, so much affect us.

But no. I just couldn’t meet the expectations of my clients due to a natural disaster. I had to cancel all my appointments for Monday, and as Monday night rolled around it looked like I might have to cancel all of Tuesday’s appointments too.

I sat up at night pondering this. I had to stay home. Even if my teen was more than capable of taking care of the little ones so I could take care of what I needed to, it wasn’t right to leave them here, alone, with no electricity, or way to contact me or their dad.

I made out the list in my head of all I needed to do, the phone calls I needed to make, the quick trips to Starbucks I hoped to get away with, the apologetic emails I needed to write, the errands I needed to run for the kids such as getting the medication for the sudden ear infection, cardiology appointment for the heart murmur, lung exam for the recently discovered “dormant” TB courtesy of a recent trip to Honduras, back-to-school shopping, and cleaning and groceries, of course the promise to go to the gym more than once or twice a week…when suddenly, laying there in my bed, at 2:30AM, sandwiched between the 6 year old who snuck in our bed and my husband, I started to cry. I covered my mouth so as to not wake up my husband, or my son, but my shaking body was enough to make my husband wake from his slumber, turn to me, and gently ask me what was wrong.

What could I say without sounding stupid? That I was upset that I was missing work appointments and client engagements? That I wasn’t getting that video or those articles or those blog posts out on time? That there was no way in hell I was going to meet my gym quota for the week? That it all was stressing me out?!

I’ve been here before, in this place of overwhelming emotional displacement. Where priorities seem to get blurry and what’s important isn’t in anyway clear.

 What am I trying to prove? To whom? And why?

People talk a lot about work-life balance. But I have come to believe that there is no such thing. In reality, there is no true balance, but in essence the sacrifice of the one thing that you determine to be less important in the achievement of your own personal happiness. Whatever the choices we make, whether it be family, or work, or friends, or us personally, we often put one over the other because we want to, mostly because we need to.

The priorities, at least for most of us, change if not daily, weekly, or as often as our own personal sanity needs them to.

As I sat there sobbing, I was riddled with the guilt of sacrificing too much time with my children in pursuit of my own personal gains. Only I know what that means. And when my husband asked me how he could help, I knew that really, only I could fix it because it was up to me to shift my priorities in a way that would make me fill fulfilled in the area that I felt I was lacking.

Today, this week, may not be the time for “me”, but it brings me joy – pure, guilt-free joy – to make it about my kids.

Time just goes by so fast and I am not sure it’s really all that worth missing any of it.

Maybe, when that part of my soul feels “full” (enough), I can focus on other areas…but as far as “balance”, well, that will never be. Nothing will ever have my equal amount of attention and that’s ok. At some point, something has to give, and my goal is that the one thing falling behind is not the thing that means the most to me. Not matter what.

Once I acknowledged this, locked down in my head what that “one thing” was, I was able to stop, breath, relax, appreciate my efforts, love my choices, and fall asleep.

I may be hard on myself, and feel I am failing my children because I leave them so often to work, but then things like these happen to remind me that I may not be doing so badly after all.

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Tags: opinion
Posted in Adventures, Editorials, Latest Adventure, Video | 10 Comments »