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Quiet time. I am absolutely amazed at how much reading, writing, quiet, thinking, pondering time I need. No matter how much I get, it never seems to be enough. I don’t know what the perfect equilibrium would look like. A perfect balance of flitting between thinking, doing, and acting on ideas, fantasies, and time with those I care about.

Identity. I identify myself as an Introverted-intuitive-feeling-judging person on the Meyers Briggs scale. I recently tested at having these top five strengths: input, intellection, belief, learner, deliberative. Both scales – both themes – remind me I need refresh time to be my best, time to let my ideas stew (or simmer and perk), time to create ideas, time to ponder all that goes around. Remembering, knowing these things validates what I feel are needs, daily.

Self awareness. We continually grow up. We continually evolve. We learn more about ourselves – what we like, what we don’t like, what we’re good at, what we’re not good at – we become aware. Part of the “input” and “deliberative” identities are these thirsts, these cravings for knowledge. The need, the drive, to ask questions, take it all in, process it, and come up with a grand idea (intellection) or understanding. Sometimes it feels throughout my 20s, I spent a lot of time taking in these inputs, slowly figuring out what they meant to me. Should I get a tattoo? What would socialism really look like? Do I care about playing the guitar? What makes art art? What do they want out of life? Would I want the same things?

Sometimes, throughout those ponderings in my 20s, I felt lonely wishing I had another to share these ponderings. Now, I am married and have a child, and my pendulum has swung the other way. They don’t process in the same way I do. My new challenge is striking that balance. I yearned for so much before, and now, how do I match these things up?

Right now, it feels like there is never enough time. Never enough time to write. Never enough time to read. Never enough time to garden. Never enough time to knit. Never enough time to bake bread. Never enough time to sweep, vacuum, clean the bathroom. Never enough time to meal plan. Never enough time to sort through the day. Never enough time to read 1,000 books to Levi. Never enough time to clean up the paint I want him to play with. Never enough.

Part psychological, yes I know. The question I cannot seem to answer is how to make it enough? What do I let go of in order to have enough? Often, this seems like the biggest challenge in this act I call balance. Self needs. Mother needs. Wife needs. Work needs. How can they be in equilibrium? Or, is it not about equilibrium at all? Is it about giving my all on self one way, my all as mother the next, wife the day after, work the day after that? Withdrawing and participating like ocean waves? I want it all.  You can’t have it all. I want it all.

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