Once in high school I was told “You have terrible balance.”
Granted, this was right after a surprise trust-fall kind of situation (I didn’t let them hit the ground, I might add), but it wasn’t completely off-base.
In my personal history I’ve been really terrible at balance.
Balance is something I always seem to be hearing about, even when it’s not blatant I hear it in subtext. Maybe because I’m someone that’s always struggled with it, I just have a hypersensitivity & connect it to everything. But we really do seem to talk about it a lot, don’t we?
My lack of balance has always led me to doing a lot of one thing for periods of time that are longer than they probably should be. I work for a job so much, whether I like it or not, that I wear myself out & don’t do much of the things I actually enjoy from home. Things like sewing, creating, coming up with new ideas, playing with the pups, or spending time with Joel. I consider myself a binger, to a certain degree. I binge on types of foods, eating one particular thing consistently for weeks or months at a time. I binge on a song, a TV show, or pair of shoes. Eventually I change it up, or just realise I’m being crazy & try to mix it up a little bit more. Giving up drinking was part of this realisation, not that I’m a traditional binge drinker, but I was absolutely letting various periods of consistent drinking destroy balance in my life (I’ve noticed that sometimes you just have to cut some things off completely in order to even out the scales).
The thing is, I’ve discovered that in some ways, I can make that work for me. Knowing that I work best getting things done in larger chunks of time can help me to organise mine in such a way that I get more done. So I work best as a binger, it’s easier for me to spend a day off primarily doing one thing.
Everyone has a different balance point, right? Perhaps mine needs a scale that accommodates doing in bulk.
I think we’ve been tricked into thinking that balance is one-size-fits-all, which is nonsense. Shorter people have a lower centre of gravity than tall people, that’s science, I think. It applies to getting & keeping your balance, which can be difficult to find. It’s hard to find because others would have you believe that there’s only one way to even it out.
I’ve been making steps to recognise where I feel most balanced & implement things that will use that to make me more productive, & hopefully boost finding inspiration (also figuring out what I want to do with my life next). I want to make time for things in the way that works best for me.
I’m still going to binge on things, it’s just kind of my way. & if listening to the same song almost on repeat for weeks at a time is detrimental somehow…well, prove it & then I’ll consider not doing that anymore. Let’s all consider fostering balance in our lives in ways that fit us. I’ll look at dedicating longer stretches of time to certain things while balancing them with stretches dedicated to others. I’ll fine-tune it until I’ve found my centre & not worry about what anyone else has to say about where they say that balance is. Instead of trying to make one kind of balance work for everyone, let’s help each other find our unique equilibrium.
Where is your centre? Do you have anything that helps you keep your balance?
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