How I'm Learning To Juggle

Photo by Katie Harp on Unsplash

Happy Autumn, Camerados!

Tonight is a New Moon - new beginnings!

This Monday is Mabon, the autumnal equinox. We are well and truly entering the Season of Contemplation. Once I get home from class, I’ll be decorating the house with the Zen Master: pumpkins, black candles, brass leaves I picked up from an artisan at the Renn Faire, skeletons, and praying to the Goddess that kitty Luna will resist the urge to mess it all up (it’s all old hat to Circe). I love it, and I also have to prepare myself for autumn because I have seasonal depression and because this is my most creative and productive season and I have to balance that energy with the seasonal energy of really wanting to slow down and go inward.

Here in the North, as autumn settles herself on the land, darkness creeps into our days as early as the four o’clock hour, so I’ve ordered my beeswax candles and will be pulling out my light therapy lamp soon. I have all the heated blankets and tins of tea, a foamer for milk lattes, you name it. This is my happy place. But/and. It’s so easy to blink and miss it if I get too caught up in the busyness of the demands coming at me from everywhere.

Recently, someone told me that they were gifted with a helpful way to think about how to manage all the stressors in their life. We’re all juggling so much, and it’s really a matter of figuring out which “balls” are made of glass and which are made of rubber. Don’t stress about the rubber ones—they’ll bounce back up or they’ll roll away. Whatever. It’s the glass ones you need to focus on not dropping. That really helped me, and this post is about that. How to figure out what’s made of glass and rubber in both our personal and writing lives….and how to let go of the rubber ones we drop. (And forgive ourselves when we drop the glass ones, too. Because we will.).

This is a good time to learn how to juggle: before the hysteria of the holidays sets in, before the panic of your Year in Review sinks its claws into you. Let’s put everything on the table and see what’s made of glass and what’s made of rubber. Let’s be honest about what is reasonable for one human being to actually juggle. If you have an enormous number of glass balls, then that’s really important data. That means you need help. Because you will drop them. You only have two hands. Unless you have a magical spell and, if so, please email me.

Maybe it’s really, really hard for you to accept that you can’t juggle all the balls. (Dear lord, I’m a child and I know I’m not the only one who went heehee when I wrote that sentence). That’s okay. It’s good to know that. Great data—and, guess what? You also only have two hands. So, that means we get to work on getting comfortable with discomfort and either asking for help or being okay with imperfection. You can also email me! I love working with writers on learning that gold stars aren’t worth mental breakdowns. Been there, done that.

Okay, let’s do this!

Photo by Shunsuke Ono on Unsplash

Juggling, Writer-Style

Now, this juggling act won’t get us into any circus I know of, but it’ll keep us out of the circus that our modern world has become—a mayhem that is the worst possible environment for the writer brain. We don’t need the trapeze act of cell phone notifications and constant agony of having to remember whether or not we subscribed to this or that for [insert supplement, food product, contact lenses, you name it]. Nor do we need the supposed lion tamer that AI claims to be to make our lives more seamless—Chat GPT is not your friend. In fact, it’s trying to kill you. Literally.

But before we figure out what balls we can juggle with, it can sometimes be useful to think about the buckets those balls even go in to begin with. Basically, the categories of your life.

Your Buckets

I have three big buckets in my professional life: author, creativity/writing coach, almost-licensed clinical psychotherapist.

Then there’s the personal buckets: Relationships (wife, cat mama, sister, auntie, other familial roles, friend), writer (notice this is different from “author” above), activist, creative, spiritual seeker, traveler, reader, person living with chronic pain and invisible disabilities / mental health diagnoses.

This is the macro overview of my life. The balls that I juggle are the micro of each of these areas. Each bucket has balls. Some are made of rubber, and some are made of glass.

Glass Juggling Balls

The glass balls are the things in my life that, if I drop them and they shatter on the ground, I am well and truly in MAYDAY mode. These are the important things in my life. The actually important things. My marriage. My health. My commitments to my clients.

What are your glass balls? BE SURE TO INCLUDE WRITING.

• List any balls you can throw away right now.

• List any balls you can give to someone else to juggle. Name who those people might be. *** Important: You need to make a plan to ask those people to juggle them. Email them, maybe now, to juggle those balls. ***

• List any balls you can put on a shelf for later. You will juggle them later, just not now.

Juggling glass is difficult. If it falls, it will break. (Let’s assume you are standing on a stone floor, for the purposes of this exercise.)

I don’t know about you, but I can only juggle so many things at once, and if those things are made of glass, I’m going to make sure I don’t have a lot of glass balls in the air.

• What are the glass balls you currently able to juggle right now?

Rubber Juggling Balls

The rubber balls are the things in my life that, if I drop them, it’s really not a big deal. They will bounce back up. Again and again. Or they will bounce away and roll under the couch and I will literally never remember they existed until, months later, they emerge, coated in dust, because one of my cats found them. These are: emails (especially ever thinking I can get to inbox zero), errands, books on my TBR pile, invitations to events, returning texts, having a truly clean house (ha!), learning another language, fixing my sewing machine…you get the idea.

What are your rubber juggling balls? Write a list.

For this one, really think about those sneaky things….like that podcast you feel like you have to listen to so you can stay up to date on the news, even though it kinda takes up a lot of brain space when you could have been daydreaming about your book.

Or the cleaning you’re always doing when you might take up some of that time to meditate, take a walk, or do something creative.

The rubber balls are even more important, in some ways, to think about because they are the ones that take over our lives. They are the things that steal our writing time, our mental space, wreak havoc on our mental health and self-confidence (hello, social media). The rubber balls are all the stupid shit we put before things that really matter. They also feed our procrastination demons.

What’s all the stupid shit you do? Gut check time. Let’s get serious here. Where do you lose time? Where do you it because you do it “best” when your partner could help, even though they don’t clean or do whatever it is as well as you do? Where can you loosen your death grip of control. Oh, god, am I gonna say it? I am. Where can you….just let them.

• List any balls you can throw away right now.

• List any balls you can give to someone else to juggle. Name who those people might be. *** Important: You need to make a plan to ask those people to juggle them. Email them, maybe now, to juggle those balls. ***

• List any balls you can put on a shelf for later. You will juggle them later, just not now.

• What are the rubber balls you are currently able to juggle right now?

Next Steps

Okay, so now you’re ready to juggle!

You’re gonna drop all the balls all the time at first and that’s okay!

Here’s a few supports we can put in place:

Accountability

Is there someone in your life you can share this concept with who can help you? Who can keep you honest? When it comes to your writing, it’s got to be a glass ball, non-negotiable. Even if right now all it is is journaling. For that, mark it on your calendar like it’s a doctors appointment you’ve waited four months to get. Keep it as consistent as possible. DO NOT change it unless you are legitimately ill. Email me if you need to and let me know you did this! I love those emails!

Rubber? Glass?

Just ask yourself from time to time - Is this rubber or glass? Someone invites you to something and you’re feeling crispy. You don’t want to go. Your instinct is that you should. Rubber or glass? Check in with your body. Are you okay if it bounces away? Let it go…

Forgiven

This is such a simple little practice, but effective. It comes from the meditation teacher Tara Brach. When you go to bed at night and your mind is swirling with self-recrimination, bring up the ball you dropped, then say in your mind, forgiven. Hand on heart, on belly, say it as many times as you need to. It really works. Then let it go. Tomorrow is a new day. Impermanence works both ways.

The Well!

Every first Sunday we gather for community support - meditation, writing, resources, and reinforcement of our writing practice. This is one way to keep that glass ball in the air.

Camerados, you got this! Some of us might have more facility with juggling than others, but that’s why we have one another. Share in the comments if you’re struggling. If you hit on a strategy that works, share please!

In the meantime, perhaps paint your nails. I mean, if we have to juggle, we may as well look good doing it, right? My current fave.

Yours in doing right by the miracle,

P.S.