Balance and Indulgence

Juggling all the things in life!

I'm going through another season of life where it's all ramping up. To what, I'm not really clear. What is apparent with a glance at my calendar is that I'm busy, and I'll be busy through the end of June at least.

I’m working the day job, which is a neat 40 hours a week, I’m working the ‘second job’ which entails this newsletter, among many other things. The problem with working for yourself? You’re working all the time. Literally… All. The. Time. I’ve been here before, and there are certainly times where I lie awake at night wondering why I’m doing it again. The reason behind that is complicated, as these things are. I should probably break it down at some point, but the nutshell is: I like doing it. I must or why would I be investing this much time, effort, and money into it? It’s not making a profit, yet, if you calculate in my time. Which I’m going to calculate, because I’m worth it.

The long view tells me that this will pay off. If in no other way than the message I got the other day thanking me for helping a new writer get a grasp of direction and scope in starting out. In any of the book reviews I get on my work. Most especially the reviews I get on Can’t Go Home Again, or But Not Broken, the PTSD anthologies. I’m having far too much fun playing in the Blanket Fort, or chatting with friends and fellow creatives in the BroadCast. The Three Moms of the Apocalypse is a rewarding role, let me tell you!

The other thing I’m doing right now is sheer self-indulgence. Not everything in life has to pay, we all need a hobby. My passion, an obsession from the time I was about 6 years old and my grandmother took me beachcombing and foraging, has been botany and taxonomy. I’ve been an amateur naturalist ever since. Forty years, and this year I’m working through the class to become - finally! - a certified Master Naturalist. I never thought I’d be doing this in Texas. I’m enjoying myself immensely, but it’s a very active class with a lot of field trips, which eats into my precious time. So worth it.

I was talking to a friend about the Naturalist class, and she helped me clarify why it’s so important to me, especially now. I’ve always wanted to be a scientist. Leaving the lab was a wrench to my self-image. Working back towards citizen scientist by involving myself in field research through iNaturalist and the TMN program is filling that hole in my soul. In a way, it’s even closer than I managed to get though my education and every lab but the last. I can name things. I can study plants, and native pollinators, and their interrelationships with the ecosystems around them. I can make observations. I have an excuse to spend more time out of doors in the wild, where I feel most at home. Always.

I never quite achieve balance. It’s a constant adjustment, on this knife’s edge of capacity. A little too much in any direction and the whole thing collapses. Done that, many times. Balance is not stillness. It’s anticipation, and a subtle shift to accommodate the changing conditions you see coming ahead. It’s learning from those crashes how to fall, loose and soft, so you can get back up again, dust yourself off, and start where you are. Not where you were, you can’t ever return to the same exact position. But you are somewhere, and standing there pouting about where you’d like to be isn’t helping.

In the long run, this may all pay off. Not in financial security, although that would be nice in my retirement years. No, in the mental whetstone that keeps my brain sharp, balancing on the knife’s edge of age and infirmity. Remember, I’m playing the long game, and I’m a scientist. I know what takes the toll on a human who has lived long enough to start to slip a few cogs, and if I can take the steps now, to build the habits and patterns that will carry me into a meaningful and useful twilight, I will have achieved balance in my life.

We all need a purpose. I’m at the point where my main driving motivations in my entire adult life are coming to an end, and that end is close enough to see all too clearly. Time for me to indulge my self, and find the meaning in life that can keep me going through losses.