I have had a full week. A really full week. And I've struggled with its fullness. A lot.
My friend Jana mentioned the other day on twitter that she was having a perfect amount of "whelmedness" that day,not too overwhelmed and not too underwhelmed. What a fabulous idea! It sounded like an absolutely perfect day to me since I seem to have had my fair share of the former kind lately and have been dreaming of the latter.
But really when it comes down to it, what I have been wanting is that perfect balance of "whelmedness" each day. Don't we all? As I descended into one of my internal "balance of life" struggles, I realized however that even though this perfection is a good thing to strive for, achieving a perfect balance of whelmedness each day is a high and lofty goal. Perhaps I should stop thinking that I can do that every day and cut myself at least a little bit of slack. Just maybe.
One of the questions I get asked the most often, which might also be why I think about it so much, is how do I balance a full time, often more than full time design job, and business along with being a "stay at home" mom of my three munchkins. To be fair, I don't really think I am such a good example of either. I have business and production offices next door and a wonderful staff of gals who help me make it all happen on a variety of fronts. They sew, they edit, they process orders and answer emails. They stuff patterns and ship boxes. They do most of the paperwork.
... Gabrielle made new cream bundles up on the website now.....
I have a hub who runs most of the fulfillment side of the business and all 3 of my kids are in school now so the balance is definitely more doable these days than it was when I started all of this craziness. Mr. Fig and I share all child responsibilities since both of our jobs have the luxury of flexing around the kids and I know that I couldn't do it at all without all of these folks and without all of this help.
And yet I still struggle with what I am not doing on any given day.
In the end, there isn't any good answer to the balance question, other than I take each day as it comes and often feel like I have let one of the two halves down. As I thought about it al again this morning, what I realized was that what I want to strive for is balance in my week and balance in my month. Balance in my day would be the icing on my cupcake but can't happen most days!
Their will be days like this Wednesday, the first day of school, when one side is clearly more important than the other.
... first day of school photos of the two youngest Figs!
There will be days like this Monday, the final deadline for my newest manuscript, when the other side of my pendulum will win.
... prop shots from the photo shoot, since I can't actually show any of the products just yet....
There will be days like this Tuesday, back to school shopping in the morning/photo shoot in the afternoon, when I will try to do both and feel completely overwhelmed by the end of the day, not sure that I gave either halves of my life all that they needed.
...more props from the other day's shoot.
And there will be days like today when I will sleep in a little, let the hub get the munchkins off to school, let the office gals run the office without me and enjoy a little bit of quiet time with my tea and the homemade zucchini bread that my 13 yr. old boy whipped up this weekend.
There will be evenings like today when our friend will need to take the munchkins out to dinner, while I finish studying the swatches for the next fabric collection I am working on but I will still get to tuck them into bed when the day is done.
Who knows what tomorrow will look like. But as I look back on the week AS A WHOLE, I think I can be happy about what I accomplished, what I chose to do and what I chose to hold off on. All in all, I think my week has had a perfect balance of whelmedness even if each day felt completely different and perhaps not that perfect in and of itself.
Trying to keep myself focused on the big picture instead of the little one that gets me down and makes me crazy. This balance thing is not that easy. I am sure you all know this already. I am wishing each and every one of you the perfect balance of whelmedness this next week!
xox
Joanna
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