Friday, April 11, 2014

J is for Juggle

It's the A to Zed Challenge! I'll be posting the first half of the month from Ottawa where I'm staying with my youngest and his partner and their newest - a little guy who was born the end of March. Yay!

Theme? Writing and Life is what comes to me... how to balance the writing life with the other tugs you may have...

The ABCDEaria of the Writing Life -


J is for Juggle

Juggle? Really? You think? I can hear every writer laughing their head off at this one. Yep, if you are going to write and have a fairly normal life (normal in that you have friends, family, at least a dog or you know - garbage to put out on Wednesdays) then you are going to have to juggle. 

Have you ever juggled? I tried for awhile (I am a part-time clown) and I got as far as juggling two oranges with one hand. The thing I think I know about juggling, and I'm sure Lee can help me out here, is that you have to believe each object is truly the most important one. If you think that only the crystal ball is important maybe cuz it cost more and really the orange is replaceable, well then you are going to drop them all. If I start thinking that my family isn't as
important as my writing, then I'm going to drop my family and my writing. So once you decide on what it is that is important and pay attention to all of them then you should be able to do it. I completely made this up but I believe it is true. We'll see won't we.
 Today's photo is one I took of an errant balloon.  

4 comments:

ShaunaKelleyWrites said...

This is so true and fitting! I am currently juggling this challenge with a full time job, two part time jobs, and a novel that is SO CLOSE to being ready for editing... Its hard to build a life where writing doesn't become the secondary activity, but I am working towards it. Thank you for sharing this!

Anonymous said...

Jan - Juggling is my life. All of us have obligations besides writing, and the trick is to juggle well so that we can inhabit all of our worlds. That's the one thing they don't teach you in composition classes...

Elizabeth Spann Craig said...

Jan--This is something I still struggle with, but I like your approach! I try to make everything equally important, but then I sometimes feel a little frantic.

Trisha said...

I have my good times and my bad times, in terms of juggling.

My mum actually makes juggling beanbags for school circuses to juggle with. :)