Balancing Act

I have a journal that I use everyday (well…that’s the goal at least…) and it offers daily prompts if you’re just not feeling “reflecty.” Sometimes they’re totally stupid and I ignore them but today’s caught my attention, of course never in the way the journal makers intend. It asked me:

What balance do you want to achieve?

And I had a thought.

I’m finding myself at a moment right now where I just want everything I want.  I’ve put in my time struggling so hard.  I want to have a job that allows me to live a good life–so that I can go and live a good life and not wake up solely to trudge through the job everyday.  I want to spend all my time with June and also make enough money to not just live, but also thrive.  I want to be as creative as I want without making the creativity a hobby but also not destroying it by turning it into work.

I want an Airstream fully outfitted for a glorious life where I choose to live it.

So is this balance?  I don’t think so. I’m not interested in balance.

This is what life looks like when you “balance it” on terms rooted in abundance. Where did we get the idea we can’t have it all? The inherent nature of a balance is that it’s evening out two opposite poles that exert some kind of contradicting forces that “pull” you from one end to the other.  The framing of this question naturally puts you into the mindset of a zero-sum competition where in order to hit the middle, you have to land on an infinitely fine line exactly between the two opposing forces.

Does anyone ever stop to think how impossible and consuming of a project that it?  It seems like we’ll never win that one, or if we do, it’ll be momentary…and we’ll just chase it again forever, hoping to find that rarest moment again, if only to have it for one moment.

I don’t think it’s balance that I want.  I want it all.  I want a different game.

Now to go find it. Or make it.