Women are juggling champions.
We women who have multiple titles, a variety of balls in the not only on any given day but often times in any given hour we can be tossing around the titles of Timmy’s Mom, Ad executive, blogger, mediator, chauffeur, Committee head and housekeeping coordinator.
There are days I sit at my desk in my home office attempting to plan for what is the most important and therefore highest priority item on my to do list, I get tangled up in wanting to “get it right”. I want to be able to prioritize and plan like the executive (of either gender) who only has that one hat to wear from 8 to 5.
I look around my home office and see it is actually more like an office that spreads itself about the house with bits and pieces on the kitchen table, in my garage studio and even sometimes in my daughter’s room – perhaps a report I read before falling asleep for an afternoon nap because I am so tired of juggling this and that and the other.
I pause and reflect momentarily. Maybe it actually IS my fault because if I was only more focused, my only concern would be the life work task I have chosen for that set amount of time.
I had a breakthrough the other day.
I realized I would need to embrace hopping from one thing to another in order to be successful and get everything done.
I really wanted to play with my black out poem from earlier in the day, but I knew I needed to finish with the laundry so my daughter would have her costume ready for her performance at school that night.
I had to control myself.
I set out my poem with markers atop the simple first draft. I told myself when I finished with the laundry and the follow up phone calls I could come back to decorating the poem.
This may sound so elemental until I look around my boxes of “stuff” to see how many unfinished projects I have found lying around years later.
Why didn’t I finish Something “more important” came along so my vision was lost. If not careful, it could be lost forever.
Enter my nasty judgmental “just focus for eight hours straight like that executive if you want to get anything done,” voice struts in complete with high heels, flat abs and the perfect perky boobs the likes of which never lived on my body and I put my “fun” aside, never to return.
Thankfully, I’ve matured enough to know I need to complete the stuff I love. I need to remember it is there. I need to honor my creative leanings and know that in honoring those creative leanings not only do I have more fun in the moment, I create a more cozy working and living space for my children and I.
If I hadn’t finished polishing my black out poem, it probably wouldn’t make an enormous difference right away. Its more about what happens when you never finish what you start.
It soon becomes a belief, “I never finish anything.” Simply by layering self control in smaller chunks you will become more successful. I can guarantee it.
After a crazy hectic weekend, I actually framed the poem and it is now on the wall above my desk.
I didn’t wait for the “someday when I finally learn to focus I will reward myself” to show up.
Instead, I live within a healthy balance between what my heart longs to do and what needs to get done in order to continue to thrive as a creative entrepreneur, mother and some of those other most colorful juggling balls flying around in the air.
What action can you take - a simple, small one is usually best, to begin (or maintain) a healthy balance as you keep all those juggling balls in the air?
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Julie Jordan Scott is a writer, creative life coach, speaker, performance poet, Mommy and mixed-media artist. Her word-love themed art will be for sale at a First Friday in Downtown Bakersfield. Check out the links below to follow her on a bunch of different social media channels, especially if you find the idea of a Word-Love Party bus particularly enticing.
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