Talking About the “B” Word…

Happy Friday guys! I hope you had a lovely week and if you have had a week like mine, then you are SO ready for the weekend!

I have had this post on my mind for quite a few days – so today, is the day, when I try to write out whats been happening inside my head.

Balance – The coveted “B” word. Am I right, ladies and gents? I mean, whether you are a stay-at-home mom/dad, working mom/dad, or not even a parent but a student, business owner, entrepreneur – literally anything, you are for sure struggling with the “B” word. You are struggling between stabilizing your excessive caffeine intake and your needs of self-care. You are struggling with catching up on your inbox, which is flooded with unread messages and also making sure the dishwasher is unloaded and then loaded yet again for the third time. You are struggling with willing yourself to get out of bed before the kids so you can get in some quite coffee time  all the while wrangling kids out the door to make it to school drop off on time. You are struggling with  the comparison vortex you get sucked into every time you see an “influencer” post photos of their perfect white home, with white couches and pretty christmas decor while you try and get your child to not take apart your coffee table centre piece because she has decided the coffee table is now a chair (yes thats my personal story!).

In short, we are ALL struggling with BALANCING something or the other in our lives. And I hate to break it to you guys, BALANCE is the most over rated word and BALANCE in life does NOT exist…. at least not in mine and that is what I have come to accept in the recent months. When I think I am doing an excellent job at being a PhD student AND a mom, something else is giving i.e. self care. I had the worst shoulder and back pain about a month ago.. so I booked a massage appointment to get some “me” time in. I think I cried for the whole hour that the sweetest RMT worked on my shoulders with the lightest possible pressure. She asked me to move my hand back to touch the spot between my shoulder blades.. you guys, I couldn’t even get it past the mid section of my back! The RMT told me that I would have to come back twice a week for the next three weeks to get my shoulder and arm mobility back and take a break from working on the computer (i.e. SCHOOL, BLOG etc) and lifting heavy things (i.e. people aka my daughter)… a real life example of how my body was suffering as a consequence of my attempt to do it all! no such thing as doing it all – sadly!

The other night, I was chatting with my husband about how I just had to unfollow someone on Instagram because watching their decor process brought up feelings of not doing it right or not having a pretty enough house – anyone else with me when you watch stories? It may seem silly or even petty – but it truly has been a struggle for me in realizing that every person on social media is at a different season in their life. My life is not directly comparable to any single person’s out there because my life, situation, income, children, family etc are all MINE – and not theirs. What is it that they say? Comparison is the thief of joy? Well.. comparison had been robbing me of self-satisfaction as well while I struggled to balance it all. Personally, for me, it was one specific person on Instagram whom I adore. But I couldn’t abate my own feelings of anxiety and the only way to reign in my anxiety was to just hit unfollow.

The bigger balancing struggle for me is coming up in 2018. For those of you who have been following my residency story, you know that I am travelling quite a bit across the country in January for interviews, so balancing it all will again be a struggle. And I really have been thinking about re-evaluating my commitments to the blog and all that goes with it as a way of leaving more empty spaces in my calendar. I may be around a bit less.. I may write a bit less but that will give me some time to re balance and re prioritize some things that have been falling by the way side, especially in my personal life and self care department. Do you ever struggle with balance? Please tell me I’m not the only one? I love hearing from you – so leave me a comment below <3

xoxo

Areeba