Life is a Juggling Act so What Happens if You Can't Juggle?

Life is definitely a juggling act and that has never been so apparent to me in recent months. I've always been quite lucky to have been a stay at home parent whilst my husband went to work. Our roles were clear, he went out and earned the money to pay the bills, keep a roof over our heads whilst I looked after the children and kept the house in running order. But what happens when life just isn't this simple?

My life has changed quite a lot since September, with my youngest starting school and leaving me with more free time, or I so I thought. Skip forward to now and not only am I still doing the parenting thing and cooking, cleaning, washing etc, I'm also volunteering almost full time at the girls school, as well as being a midday supervisor up there and I am also trying to fit in a course to become a teaching assistant.

Now I've always prided myself on being quite an organised person, I'm a big believer in routine but I've come to feel like there just aren't enough hours in the day, like I've picked up too many balls to juggle. So lets say these balls that I'm trying to juggle are named work, parenting and everything else in-between, what happens if you can't keep them all going round, what happens if one accidentally drops to the ground?

Life is a juggling act so what happens if I can't juggle?

And this is where I worry. I don't want to concentrate too hard on a certain set of juggling balls and somehow let another set slip through my fingers and damage them in any way. My children and my husband are of course my main focus so I know my attention should lean towards them but then my work, my own future will surely affect them too?

I saw a quote on Goodreads from James Patterson that really got me thinking about this dilemma and he actually uses my thoughts about juggling.

“Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you're keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls...are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered.”

I think this is where I need to be more time savvy and prioritise. In order to keep the balls in the air I need to be aware of which one is about to hit the ground and do something to throw it back up again. I think in some aspects I'm my own worst enemy as I have such high expectations of myself, the fear of failing at anything is always there in the back of my mind. Perhaps there are tasks that I could leave to do later?

Have I picked up too many balls to juggle?

When it comes to home life would it be the worst thing to leave the hoovering until another day, would the kids really mind if I didn't cook a meal from scratch every night? 

When I think about it really anyone can learn how to juggle, I guess the real test is learning to do it well. Whether that means making it more manageable by juggling less balls, or lowering the expectations of how high each ball can go. There shouldn't be constant feeling of worry or dread. The life that I'm juggling with my family is there to be enjoyed after all.