The Pursuit of Balance

I was talking today in my office about why many people seem to find more time to spend on social networking sites, like Facebook, as opposed to their blogs (if they have one).

Reasons we came up with was that social networking sites are a very easy way to connect and catch-up with friends; they tend to be less 'work' and more 'fun'. How else can you explain how much time you can spend checking out peoples' photos and commenting on them, when spending the same amount of time composing a blog post is unthinkable. Then, of course, blogging involves a lot of writing and most people I know do not like to write. Add on top, everyone's seemingly busy schedule, well, blogging goes right down to the bottom of the priority list.

This led us to discussing time management tactics. ST shared that she jots down ideas for blog posts on paper, in the bus on her way home, and on her phone. She also types out her posts in MS Word and copies and pastes them into Blogger when she gets online.

I used to do many of these things, but have definitely slacked over the years. Blogging more regularly for me usually meant late nights spent composing posts. Once I decided that I no longer wanted to sacrifice my sleep, that put paid to me almost daily blogging.

This makes me think about how we can achieve balance in life. My conclusion is that real balance is almost impossible to achieve. Something has always got to give. Something suffers slightly. From time to time, we swing between devoting too much time to one thing and less to some others. For me, right now, my blogging has taken a bit of a back seat, but the pendulum will swing back sometime.

Speaking of balance, I came across this article on S&F Online, titled Exploding the Myth of Balance, or Superwoman Bites the Dust, which explores the idea that women can have it all, i.e. a perfectly balanced life in which work and family lie easily alongside. It looks at two women - both feminists - but who made very different career and family decisions, and how they came to terms with their choices. It makes for an interesting read, because it examines that all too familiar situation when our ideals do not align with our realities, and we find that we need to make some difficult decisions.