I was tagged by Laughing Muse with a meme started by Lillie at A Writer’s Words, an Editor’s Eye: To participate, write a post about balance in life and link back to this post. Answer any or all of the following questions or simply share your thoughts about life balance.
Man, these are some great questions.
How do you achieve balance in your life? It’s an ongoing struggle for me, to be honest. I am constantly trying to balance:
- Work (gotta earn money)
- Family (time with the fiancé, my folks, his folks, etc)
- Friends (mine and his)
- Spiritual study
- Volunteer work (I have very, very little time for this and it pisses me off)
- Secular self-improvement (things like Aikido)
- My health and sanity
I try to check in mentally with each aspect and see if I need to spend more time with it. I also try to balance my schedule out ahead of time, though that doesn’t always work.
What is your biggest challenge in balancing your life? I’m a bit of a workaholic, and something of a perfectionist too. It’s very difficult to balance yourself out when you tend to obsess over things.
What are your priorities? Currently, I am prioritizing health, the fiancé, spiritual study, and work, though not 100% in that order.
How have your priorities changed over time and why? Well, my number one priority for many years was school. Nothing came before that. I cut class exactly once between kindergarten and grad school – any other time I was absent was because of health issues or because my family took me out of school or something similar. Just not turning up to class didn’t even occur to me. When I graduated, it kind of freaked me out, and I wound up prioritizing work as number one. That was a bad idea. Wound up with six jobs and no life. Bah.
What advice can you share to help all of us balance our own lives? Don’t put work first. Put it just high enough that you do well and your boss likes you, but learn to set boundaries. Also, put things into a routine and stick to them. I know I am a lot more settled and balanced since I put daily spiritual practice in my routine.
Tag five people. Anybody as wants to, honestly, though I’d love to see what Joie-de-livre, Becca, Junglemonkee, and Mortaine have to say on the subject.
