Here’s what balance means to me: the discipline to get shit done, to stick to routines, to say yes and show up, to move my body, to write, to create, to move forward. And also, to give myself permission to do none of those things some days, to stay up too late and drink a little too much with friends and sleep in and cancel plans and watch eighteen or so episodes of She-Ra on Netflix in the same leggings I slept in.
Balance, to me, means enjoying my life when I can and realizing that most days that means practicing the true self-care (the exercise and the committments and self-awareness) and some days not doing any of those things and not feeling guilty about it.
In some past depressive episodes, I wasted away days on days doing a version of this pattern: the drinking, the TV all day in the dark, the ordering in food after trying to talk myself out of it. And while I watched some pretty good shows, my guilt would compound at all the other things I should have been doing. I felt like I should have been getting my life together when the truth was all I could do was hold it together by the seams.
Fast forward a few years and I want to acknowledge this past pattern while noting the difference today: happy drinking with friends, a break for my body and mind after going pretty hard lately, and genuine excitement about watching She-Ra for the first time because holy shit I can’t believe this show is real. But I can turn it off and go to bed on time and get ready for my all-day annual planning work offsite tomorrow and it’s okay that I didn’t extend my productive Saturday into a productive Sunday. It’s a matter of perspective. A matter of balance.
With Love,
Natalie