What happens when we’re off balance?

Balance is this unicorn in life we believe in but are constantly seeking to keep or prove to ourselves it can exist for us. Historically, I would tell you I do not believe it is true for an artist's life. In fact, I am telling you I do not believe it exists for creatives. We have to have something in rotation or change, whether good or bad. To have progress we have to be constantly revising, growing, and shifting which immediately introduces a discomfort or disruption to our routine. Creating a barricade for balance.

This is our season keystone, not evergreen. Balance is the ebb and flow of our creative processes, the good, the bad, and the necessary. 

What happens when we’re off balance? Being creative can mean we are empathetic to our surroundings and the natures of our influences. Often we hear or share the common phrase “life happens” and yes, all the time. I think we could easily interchange the term balance with flexibility. What happens when you’re flexible? Admitting you know the routine of what you are experiencing will inevitably shift, producing your contingency of growing pains in being flexible and adapting to the next. That is our exchange for balance. We either flex and grow, or we fall paralyzed to the shock of an unordered change.

Currently, I am seeking some rest. I don’t enjoy the idea of "overcommitment" because sometimes you are met in a busy season of many things that must be accomplished or attended to. So my commitments are just saturated, not over saturated, and that is ok for a season. Do not patronize yourself for feeling like you’re going 100 miles an hour all the time with little to show right now. It will come in time.

Balance, I believe, is the cousin to time. When we allow ourselves to recognize not all things are an immediate gratification, we can accept that time is the great equalizer in most things. If you truly want to feel balanced, you have to accept its dedicated nature of slow and steady. The missing ingredient being your acknowledgment and investment to its process.

So if you’re in the boat with me and feeling off balance, chin up and know the peace of it will come. And if you haven’t gotten to the docks yet, remember when you do, you’re not alone. It’s all a part of the process.