Balance

Now, this is a tricky one. Probably the trickiest actually. At least the one I struggle the most with.

How am I supposed to be the best friend, employee, husband, son, dog daddy, lover, colleague, eat right, stay in shape, keep my artistic side alive, stay well dressed, complete all the work at the house and so much more. How can you fit all these in a 24 hours day where 9 are taken by sleep, 2 by meals, 9 by work. Damn, it leaves you with 4 hours a day top, and that’s not even accounting the daily chores!

Put like this, it’s even worst that what I had in mind! It’s pretty obvious I guess. You just can’t. So why do I feel guilty when I am late on my emails or when I send a video message instead of calling because I cannot really “afford” a 40 minutes call with a family mmeber?

It’s called “The Urgency Effect”. This is the psychological tendency of priotizing urgent but non important matter over non-urgent but critically important matter. It’s the illusion that this email needs an immediate response whether your parents will “always be there”. Spoiler, they won’t.

Fun fact, it’s also the same with yourself. How much time did I forced myself to do something where I felt tired, empty and desperately needed some quite time? Since Julia and I bought the house, we put ourselves into a race we cannot win that has the ability to strip the pleasure from things.

There are so many things that when done in precipitation become dangerous and lose all their interest. Think of the pleasure of cookinng a nice meal with your wife while drinking a glass of wine and taking the time for doing things. Now, think of this shitty meal you prepare in a hurry, trying to speedrun every step of the way, just to land in front a of the TV sooner and leaving your kitchen in a dirty mess because you couldn’t find the drive to cleanup after you were done.

I need to learn two things.

Letting go

Not everything is important nor urgent. Actually, most things are neither but our damn brain has been broken by Slack, TikTok and Facebook. Looking for the smallest amount of dopamine, especially if it doesn’t require any effort.

Worst, I have the impression that sometimes my brain is exhausted by one thing that should actually bring me energy: Emotionnal connection.

This is not something I feel with Julia (thank god) but I am pretty sure it’s why I struggle answering (or even reading) my Whatsapp groups, or calling for their birthday. Damn, I sound like a terrible person writing this…

Do things in the right moment

I already noticed this a very long time ago but I need to learn to trust it. Very often, especially after a very intense period, I accumulate things to do until I feel I will never be able to free myself from them. I struggle and try to force myself to do it, never really succeeding. At some point, usually the day before I come back to work, my level of motivation is through the roof and I finally find the mental strenght to tick off these from the todo list… and actually enjoy myself while doing so!

But I often face two problems. First, I live with the love of my life and it feels unfair to impose my own schedule. Second, I don’t always trust my process enough and sometime I panick because time is running out and the todo list is still there waiting for me to start…