Juggling the Demands of Life

I have always admired jugglers because I have never had the hand eye co-ordination for juggling. One ball or plate is my limit. Still, even a skilled juggler has a limit to how many items can be successfully handled. One ball, plate or Indian club too many and the act is spoiled with a good chance the juggler will get smacked.

Yet I’ve discovered we are all  jugglers. It’s just that we don’t juggle those balls, plates and Indian clubs. What we are all trying to juggle are the days and hours of our lives and things are dropping, bouncing and smacking us in the forehead like crazy. As with anything some are more skilled than others. Some people never seem to “drop the ball”.  I am not one of them. Fortunately, once I really realized I was going to have to juggle whether I liked it or not I decided to got at it positively. Otherwise I’d just be putting stress on myself, as if the world doesn’t do that enough.

When you have goals you have to plan. You have to break the big tasks into manageable segments or you’ll wind up like a jack-lighted deer, frozen in place, overwhelmed by the size of the undertaking.  And you have to be willing to make adjustments. If I have to move with my cats I may have to either write my blog posts ahead of time or take a brief hiatus. I may have to skip attending the IAAHPC conference this year. Finally you have to be able to focus. The external demands must be cleared quickly and your own, internally generated goals and tasks must be the ones getting your concentration and energy. Focus is the same thing that makes a great juggler of objects and it makes for a great juggler of life’s demands.

Over the next few months I will be juggling a lot: finishing my schoolwork, packing and sorting possessions, cleaning up the yard and the house, writing my blog posts, and all the routine tasks, like getting the truck serviced and doing the shopping. I’ll be hunting up a new place for myself and the cats and getting ready for a new chapter. So I may not be as frequent a poster as I have been. Or maybe I be posting even more. When you start out on your goals looking at it as an adventure is a better to to keep up enthusiasm and enthusiasm fuels focus. You never know for sure what you’ll encounter and you may be surprised at where you wind up.