Balancing Act

It has been a very busy few months. I started a new job with a long commute and began teaching a course on the Divine Comedy for adult learners while attempting to maintain my fitness routines, a relationship and juggling doctor's appointments and shoveling the two feet of snow we have at the moment. That was definitely a run on sentence. I feel like a run on sentence. Balancing career, motherhood, and self-care has always been a challenge for women. And I usually can do it, keep numerous balls up in the air while drinking coffee and "relaxing" in yoga. I have managed to fit in my daily run by waking up at 3:45 so that I had enough time for my hour and half commute to work. I have managed to race home, let the dogs out and eat a quick dinner of fruit on the way to a yoga class. I have managed to spend my weekends at my second job prepping for my classes. And I have managed to spend time with my boyfriend and sleep at least six hours a night. I had balanced my carefully constructed life. I was holding the pose, my standing leg was shaking, but I tucked my tail bone and reached my arms into the sky. And then it snowed. And snowed again. And I struggled to pull on snow boots and ski pants and shovel. And shovel, and push my way through the backyard with the dogs, and take off the boots and the pants and and and...I toppled to the floor. Winter happened in New England, it always does, once per year, but I forget how long it takes to yank up the boots, to pull on the gloves each time one has to exit the house. Those moments add up, as quickly as the snow piles up, and then drifts onto the newly shoveled path. I need to learn to laugh when I tumble out of balancing poses, to have a rest and maybe just stay down for a few moments to recover. I can always pull myself back up, but allowing myself to be a few minutes late here and there, to buy pre-cooked food instead of fumbling with the tofu, to decrease (gasp) my mileage, just until the sun warms up the earth, and I can trounce out of the house in a pair of flipflops. Can I do it? Can I slow down just a tiny bit?