My life has assumed a frantic pace over the past months, and today it threatens to overwhelm me. I feel as if I am fielding six million separate conversations relating to social engagements and scheduling. It's like I'm playing one of those typing games from elementary school where you have to type words before they fall off the cliff. I'm madly typing and making all sorts of typos as I attempt to keep the words from falling into oblivion. How is it that I am supposed to manage all of these demands on my time and attention? I've never been the social butterfly, except maybe in college when I lived with my friends. I spent high school holed up in my bedroom reading Christian historical fiction and graduate school doing homework and wandering the breathtakingly beautiful hills of Bellingham, WA. I know scheduling difficulties only as they relate to making sure I leave enough time between work and church commitments for homework.
Times have apparently changed.
There are so many people and things in my life that are important to me. As I have accumulated things and people of importance I have been forced to regiment my life more and more strictly to allow for it all to happen. Take Tuesday, for example. Tuesday I work until 5:30, run home to change for teaching piano lessons at 6:00, teach piano lessons until 7:00, run to bible study which I am now always late for since it starts at 7:00. After bible study I spend a few minutes with my boyfriend and then it's time for bed. I wake up Wednesday and perform much the same routine again. Work, visit the assisted living, dinner with friends, time with boyfriend, bed. Then there are days like Sunday. Sunday I work and theoretically have the evening free. Theoretically. Ha. Today, for example, I work until 4:15, potentially have a phone date with a friend, potentially hang out with a friend in town depending on when the phone date happens, potentially go to her small group if it all lines up perfectly, then hang out with my boyfriend at 8:30ish, then potentially a skype date with another friend at 10. Seriously? This has become my life. Hour by hour it is regimented to the point of breaking.
And in some ways I like it. It's nice to not have time to think or breathe sometimes. I feel productive when it all goes perfectly. Juggling is fun when all the balls are in the air. The people I spend time with are important to me and I want to have time for them all. I value my time with my boyfriend incredibly highly and am not willing to sacrifice it. But every once in a while it all becomes too much.
I want to breathe the air. I want to read and write and think and sing. I want life to be less about the rat race of making enough money to exist and more about these people in my life who are so important to me. I started teaching piano lessons a few months ago and I love it, but even those few hours a week I have devoted to teaching means a few hours less to spend with the people I love.
There's nothing to be done, really. I can't give any of it up.
And so I guess I'll try to get better at juggling.
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