racheljoi.com

This will be a short post, as I have to be at work in sev­en hours, mean­ing that I have five hours to sleep, but I want­ed to say a quick word about bal­anc­ing work and life.  In the legal pro­fes­sion, or at least in pri­vate prac­tice, bal­ance seems to be active­ly dis­cour­aged.  All through law school and while look­ing for jobs, I told myself that being bal­anced was very impor­tant.  And it is.  How­ev­er, it seems to be a strug­gle to main­tain it, and my job some­times feels like it is a lit­tle kid on a teeter-tot­ter who keeps mov­ing clos­er and clos­er to the ful­crum.  I’ve joined an orches­tra and a gym, and I have tak­en over the music direc­tor posi­tion (“posi­tion” being a very loose word) at LCM as well as look­ing for a new church home in Over­land Park.  Also plan­ning a wed­ding and start­ing to look at mov­ing to KC (well, John­son Coun­ty real­ly).  And mak­ing time for friends.  I should be able to do all this, right?  It seems like these things are essen­tial to my well-being as a per­son as well as a lawyer.  And yet there is nev­er ever enough time.  As I write this, it seems more like I took too much on rather than work is demand­ing more of my time than it should rea­son­ably have, so maybe I’m just whin­ing.  Today was just a hard day, and I’m start­ing to think that this strug­gle for bal­ance, and this ide­al of work­ing at the office and not work­ing out­side the office is just that, an ide­al.