the balancing act

I've been talking about balance a lot recently.  Balanced diet, balance doing weird butt-firming isometric moves at Pure Barre, balancing my check book, and of course, work-life balance.  I'm awful at some of them -- Lean Pockets and Rockstar do not a healthy diet make, and my checkbook has been the family joke since I was about 8 years old.  My sore buns are hard evidence that I must be at least semi-decent at the barre, but the work in progress is that pesky work-life balance. 

I should probably specify what I mean by work-life balance.  As someone who shows up at 7:59:59 AM and leaves at 5:00:01 PM Monday through Friday, I have exactly zero difficulty with work-life balance.  It's the life-life balance.  The life-cooking-exercise-boyfriend-alone time-family-friends-cleaning room- doing laundry balance.

I've always struggled with this, largely due to my persistent need to appear "fun."  So in the balance boxing ring, I pretty much always let family/friends/partying kick the crap out of boring stuff like doing laundry/exercise/reading books in peace and quiet.  Fun>No fun.  Simple enough, and very mature and adult-like (heh).  It's gotten even hairier in the past, when boyfriends were added to the mix.  I'll spare you the gory details and sum it up real quick:  Boyfriend > everything else.  Eep! This is concerning for many, many reasons, but I can narrow it down to two big ones.  First, it isn't cool to blow off your friends and the rest of your life for a guy.  And second, when things end (probably due to the clinginess involved), you won't have any friends or life waiting for you.

So I've been making a conscious effort to bring a little balance to my life.  My method so far is to spend my time on things that have higher priority.  It sounds simple, but it's really not-- priorities can shift depending on the circumstances.  For example:  If Friend A, Friend B, and Boyfriend all want to hang out and I have a couple of loads of laundry to run and I need to go to the gym... BUT I hung out with Boyfriend last night and I see Friend A all the time, and it's been weeks since I've seen Friend B and I do have plenty of clean underwear left anyways, and I need a rest day anyways... Aren't you glad you don't live in my head?  Fighting through my crazy inner monologue is half the battle, and I'm trying my hardest to make the right choices.

I'm finding that the temptation is still to blow off exercise and chores for greener pastures, but nonetheless, my room is cleaner than it's ever been in my adult life and I'm starting to rack up some mileage on the treadmill.  So far, there's been a distinct lack of staged interventions from my friends to get me to hang out more, and yesterday, my boyfriend told me that I'm clingy but he "can tell that I'm trying not to be."

I'm gonna call all of those signs of success.