Finding Balance

Myriams-Fotos via Pixabay

Everywhere we turn, someone is there to remind us of some one year anniversary of the pandemic. Each of us has our own personal date -- that day when everything changed (mine is March 13). But, having lived it myself (along with all of you, albeit from a respectable social distance), I'm tired of hearing about it, so that's not what I want to focus on. Instead, I want to ask you this, as spring 2021 approaches:

Have you found your footing yet?

I ask this in light of the pandemic because, for me, the steady downhill slide that began the stutter-step stumble into (finally) some semblance of balance was kicked off by suddenly taking my face-to-face classes online. I was luckier than many because I had just completed a mini-course in online teaching in January 2020. This meant that I had some guidelines, but I was in no way prepared to offer a fully formed online educational experience. The line between work and home blurred the minute both were happening in the same place, faded with merciless speed, and was swiftly erased by an almost 24-7 dedication to teaching, grading, planning and supporting my emotionally whiplashed students.

I'm not a hero, and that's not what this post is about. This is what everyone did. We had no choice.

And I'm luckier than most. Thanks to an already blurry work-home line, sheer adrenaline, and a pseudo-break between May and August, the crushing lack of balance in my life didn't hit me until about a month ago.

At first, I was concerned about my mental health. So many people have struggled with depression and anxiety -- more than ever in the last year. Was I joining their ranks?

Luckily, my emotions weren't anything that couldn't be managed by a long-overdue rebalance. It was time to draw some boundaries. Past time, actually. Here are three things I found helpful.

Marshall your resources. I always like to start with successes. Making a list of what I wanted to spend more time doing (creative pursuits, reading, sleeping) and what I needed to spend less time doing (working nights and weekends, pushing past good enough to perfection more often than necessary) made it clear just how far over the line I'd gone and what needed to go on the road map back to my semi-happy place.

Ride the adrenaline wave, but don't forget to get off the ride. It's been a long year, and many of us have continued to try to create our own adrenaline in order to keep the pace. (Just me?) I really had begun to lose the ability to just be. When I sat still, my mind was still moving and I always felt as though I should be doing something. I needed to remind myself that down time is essential to recovery, not a sign of laziness.

Understand that life changes bring organizational changes. College kids move home. The dining room table becomes the classroom. Everyone is together all the time. All of this makes time management, not to mention stuff management so much more challenging. There are silver linings in all of these clouds, but reduced clutter is rarely one of them. Having faith that it will all come together again is a necessary mindset, and the foundation to making it so.

Life knocks us off our feet in both good ways and bad and learning how to stand our ground and weather the storm is key. This includes seeking help if we need more than a rebalance. Often, smaller life changes are nested within the large ones, and it's sometimes those little ones that erode our boundaries, one small sacrifice at a time. 

It's true for life, and it's true for organization.