{"id":845,"date":"2016-02-16T01:37:40","date_gmt":"2016-02-15T19:37:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=845"},"modified":"2021-06-18T19:13:35","modified_gmt":"2021-06-18T13:13:35","slug":"the-balancing-act","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/?p=845","title":{"rendered":"THE BALANCING ACT"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry, but this blahg is not going to be “This Is 50, Part Three.”<\/span><\/strong>\"Scott<\/span><\/strong>\u00a0 I think I ran that topic to ground with two parts.\u00a0 Now it’s 2016 and it’s been a little over a month since my last blahg.\u00a0 I thought I had better get on with it and come up with a new theme\/topic.\u00a0 Okay, so you asked for it, or maybe you didn’t and I’m just forcing it on you, but nonetheless this is the new blahg. This is actually number 52 in case you’re counting. <\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em>As some of you may know, I started a new job, or rather 2 new jobs, back in 2015.\u00a0 I was only working two days a week back then and wearing two hats.\u00a0 I was a Community Counsellor with our local Canadian Mental Health Association (CMHA) picking up the overflow for mental health counseling and I was also the Accreditation Coordinator and overseeing the beginnings of Accreditation for CMHA.\u00a0 I’m still with CMHA but in mid-January I moved into a new full-time role as Housing Preservation Counsellor.\u00a0 It’s nice to have the work, and don’t get me wrong, but it’s also tough working five days a week.\u00a0 How do people do it?\u00a0\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 My day usually starts around 7am.\u00a0 My wife comes and wakes me up and I have breakfast and my one coffee of the day.\u00a0 I shower and shave and then make my lunch and get dressed.\u00a0 I’m out the door just before 8am and at work by 8:30.\u00a0\u00a0 \"Winter<\/a>We live in the country and given that it’s Winter in Canada, I have to give myself a little extra time so I arrive on time and alive.\u00a0 This last point will become clearer a little later on in this blahg.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I thought I was doing okay with the whole return to work thing and balancing my home life.\u00a0 It has been a few years, approximately 7, since I had a job where it required me to actually go to an office every day.\u00a0 I’m usually home between 5 and 5:30pm every day now depending if I have to run errands after work.\u00a0 My wife is usually home by 4:30 because she now works only five minutes from our house.\u00a0 Compare this to the more than 15 years she worked in Trenton; a drive of 45 minutes one way.\u00a0 In the past 7 years, I was always the one at home and I primarily took care of housework and meal preparation.\u00a0 That isn’t to say my wife didn’t also do her fair share.\u00a0 I think I relied on her to do most everything on weekends.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I think I should speak a little about my wife’s daily schedule.\u00a0 By comparison, it probably is a busier schedule than mine.\u00a0 For the past number of years, probably going back to when she first started working at her school in Trenton, she gets up every morning at 6am.\u00a0 This gives her time to have her breakfast and do her bathroom routine and to also get children up and make sure they are fed and catch the school bus every morning.\u00a0 \"wifemombal\"<\/a>We only have one teenage daughter left in the house but it’s still part of my wife’s morning routine to nurture our daughter out the door on time.\u00a0 Add to all of this feeding the cats and putting out the garbage and recycling every week.\u00a0 I’m not a morning person so the past number of years I concentrated on the afternoon schedule when the children came home from school and up to and including dinner preparation.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Somewhere I’ve gotten sidetracked but listing all the things my wife does is certainly selling her short.\u00a0 Now that I’m working, she had to recently call me to the mat.\u00a0 I was letting her make dinner and clear away dishes from breakfast and dinner.\u00a0 One night she had to say to me that she wanted a little help because I seemed to be letting her do everything.\u00a0 She was right.\u00a0 I was coming home from work and trying to catch up on some things on the computer or just flopping down and engaging with our daughter or watching television.\u00a0 That’s not a good thing.\u00a0 Like I said, she had to call me on it.\u00a0 At first my reaction was to think about saying this was payback for all those years that I did the after school routine and had dinner preparation on the go before she came home.\u00a0 Fortunately my brain is still working and I stopped myself from responding that way.\u00a0 Instead, I took it to heart and have been better at being more in tune with her needs and what is needed doing around the house.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So, this blahg is about the balancing act.\u00a0 I want <\/span><\/strong>\"Climbing<\/a><\/span><\/strong>to share something else that has to do with balance.\u00a0 Last month I went to a workshop of dealing with grief and loss.\u00a0 One of the handouts from the session had us looking at some children “Climbing The Tree of Life” and circling the child that we felt best represented who we are at this moment in our lives.\u00a0 You can click on the image on the left to view the image better and to see that I selected the boy in the middle.\u00a0 I felt he best represented me because he was about half-way up and seemed happy.\u00a0 I also felt he was centered and had a good observation point.\u00a0 When I volunteered this to the person who was leading our training, she referred to the boy as balanced.\u00a0 Balanced or Centered, I think they mean about the same thing but the Balanced part ties in better to this blahg.\u00a0 That’s me.\u00a0 I think I really wanted to choose the kid hanging upside down who is drawing attention to himself but I don’t think I need to be that kid anymore.\u00a0 But my answer may change if you ask me on a different day.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I want to add something else that happened a couple of days before the workshop about grief and loss.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong>I was driving on my way to work when my truck hit a patch of black ice and began to fishtail.\u00a0 I tried to correct it by steering in the direction of the skid and taking my foot off the gas.\u00a0 Unfortunately my vehicle began to spin around and around.\u00a0 This was in a section where there were no houses and luckily no other cars coming in either direction.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong>\"where<\/a><\/span><\/strong>On the left side of the road was about eight feet of shoulder and then a field protected by a wire fence.\u00a0 On the right side of the road was five feet of shoulder before it dropped away about 60 feet into a marsh below.\u00a0 The photo above gives you some idea of the layout.\u00a0 It was only taken recently and not on the day of the accident.<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 When I started spinning in circles I was hoping if I had to go off the road that it would be on the left.\u00a0 No such luck.\u00a0 I spun out to the right but luckily the snow was deep enough that the rear end of the truck stopped fast in a snow bank.\u00a0 I heaved a quick sigh of relief when the truck came to a stop but then it started to slide backwards toward the cliff edge because I didn’t have my foot on the gas.\u00a0 I quickly put my foot back on the gas and she climbed out of the snow.\u00a0 When I looked at my tire tracks I noticed there was less than two feet from where the truck had stopped to the edge where I would have dropped off to the marsh.\u00a0 On my way home, I tried to find the spot where I had gone off the road but the snowplow had come by in the meantime and obliterated my tracks.\u00a0 If I had gone off the cliff then no one would have known that I was lying in my vehicle at the bottom of the cliff.\u00a0 All I could think was that my wife and children might never know what happened to me until Spring.\u00a0 That was a sobering thought indeed.\u00a0 <\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I know that last part really doesn’t have anything to do with a balancing act but it did put everything into perspective.\u00a0 What would have happened… I don’t want to even finish that thought.\u00a0 With all that thinking of what if, it did inspire me to write a new poem; which is something I haven’t done in a while.\u00a0 I’ll close with that.\u00a0 No song, no music, just my words:
\n<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 the balancing act<\/em><\/strong><\/h4>\n

take a boy in a tree<\/em>
\nlegs akimbo<\/em>
\naware of sky and ground<\/em>
\ntrying to be somewhere in the middle<\/em>
\nyears pass<\/em>
\nboy becomes older<\/em>
\nbigger<\/em>
\nmaybe taller<\/em>
\nmaybe just bigger around the middle<\/em>
\nmaybe married<\/em>
\nmaybe children<\/em>
\nmaybe job<\/em>
\ntrying to stay balanced<\/em>
\non his limb<\/em>
\nhis own limbs flying<\/em>
\nflying objects in the air<\/em>
\ntrying not to let anyone or anything<\/em>
\ncome crashing down<\/em><\/h4>\n

there’s no prize to keep your eyes on<\/em>
\nyou can’t look away<\/em>
\nor everything falls away<\/em>
\nmaybe steal a glance here or there<\/em>
\nat other boys in the tree<\/em>
\nmore likely other girls<\/em>
\nbut don’t let anyone catch you looking<\/em>
\ncertainly not the wife<\/em>
\nsometimes you get a glimpse<\/em>
\nof another part of the tree<\/em>
\nthe branch not taken<\/em>
\nand you wonder<\/em><\/h4>\n

and in that instance<\/em>
\nyou drop something<\/em>
\nyour guard<\/em>
\nyour focus<\/em>
\nand you shift<\/em>
\ndirection maybe<\/em>
\nweight to another foot<\/em>
\nand you pick up someone else’s load<\/em>
\nmaybe that parent<\/em>
\nwho climbed up after you<\/em>
\nand now there’s things on your shoulders<\/em>
\nmore to bear<\/em>
\nbear down<\/em>
\nstay centered<\/em><\/h4>\n

some boys jump<\/em>
\nwalk way<\/em>
\nfrom the jumble around the trunk<\/em>
\nsee the brass ring<\/em>
\nmaybe a selfish one<\/em>
\na way down<\/em>
\nhide among the bushes<\/em>
\nand be someone else<\/em>
\nanother boy<\/em><\/h4>\n

can’t be that way<\/em>
\nthis boy’s staked a spot<\/em>
\ndefend it<\/em>
\ncherish it<\/em>
\nwave off birds<\/em>
\nother intruders<\/em>
\nother boys<\/em>
\nthose other girls glimpsed from a distance<\/em><\/h4>\n

the balls are still in the air<\/em>
\nplates spinning<\/em>
\nhead erect<\/em>
\neyes forward<\/em>
\nno longer balancing<\/em>
\npart of the tree<\/em>
\nmaybe the tree<\/em>
\nrooted<\/em>
\nbeckoning to the other boys<\/em>
\ncatching their kites<\/em>
\nso they have to come nearer<\/em>
\nsee this boy’s foliage<\/em><\/h4>\n

reaching out<\/em><\/h4>\n

calling out<\/em><\/h4>\n

climb up<\/em>
\nclimb up<\/em><\/h4>\n

stay awhile<\/em><\/h4>\n

<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Sorry, but this blahg is not going to be “This Is 50, Part Three.”\u00a0 I think I ran that topic to ground with two parts.\u00a0 Now it’s 2016 and it’s been a little over a month since my last blahg.\u00a0 I thought I had better get on with it and come up with a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=845"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4815,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845\/revisions\/4815"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/falseducks.com\/theblahg\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}