People often talked about living a balanced life. Balancing kids, wife, job, health, friends and personal growth. I think for many of us that balanced gets thrown so severely out of whack as our families grow we suddenly look back and wonder what went first and why. For me it was my health and my personal growth that went first. My family and my job became the sole purpose behind all my decisions and my motivations. Getting rid of debt, saving for college, cars, a bigger house, all these things were/are priorities as my kids get older. As a Father I see myself as the person responsible for the health and well being of my wife and children, their needs have to come first and mine have to come second that is the way I was raised or at least how I perceive I was raised. My family life was not what anyone could consider stable and I think I buck the trends being raised without a father.
If you read a lot on the web like I do you start to wonder, are these facebook pages for real? Are these husbands and wives really making time for trips to Hawaii and going to spin classes when they obviously have 4 of 5 kids? Are my old friends really racing marathons and going on cruises when they have 3 toddlers at home? And if so what I am doing differently? After a day at the office and homework and dinner and breaking up fights between the boys and spending time with the girls I barely have enough energy to have a decent conversation with my wife let alone hit the gym. And the mornings? Well the mornings are just as bad, you get up and it's haul ass everywhere to get all the kids to school and if it wasn't for coffee I'd flat on my face in the driveway. Not to mention trips to anywhere take so much planning it's almost impossible to put it paper let alone do it.
Having balance in your life means not too much of one thing and not too little of another but I believe that is truly impossible to do and raise a family. I think you have to immerse yourself into your role or something can get missed and often times they do get missed. The cycle of work-stress-worry-stress really takes its toll on you and suddenly you're staring in the mirror with fifty extra pounds and baggy eyes and realize the only thing you can do at the moment is break into tears, but the tears never come, you suck them back up and push on.
They say make time for yourself. They say make time for your spouse. They say take baby steps and small changes will occur. I wonder about the people that say this stuff, are they really dealing with what I do or my wife does? Do they know that the average parent has so many small things to deal with in a day taking time for themselves is almost impossible? Hell 20 years after high school the physical changes I've endured are so drastic a baby step might blow a lung or break a floorboard it's the pendulum effect, the more it swings in one direction the harder it swings back in the other and it's not exactly easy to slow down. Sometimes it's all you can do to just hold on for dear life.
