Not as much as I could be

The cost of a balanced life

“Really successful people say no to almost everything.” - Warren Buffett

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

I thought I had tucked these worries away like I sometimes do with old winter hats when the weather turns, leaving them in the pocket of a forgotten jacket. But of course, they come back around, the way the cold does after the first bout of spring: Am I the writer I could be? The lawyer I could be? The mother I could be?

I asked David the first question—about being the writer I could be—the other night.

“No,” he said simply, but not unkindly.

This wasn’t what I’d been expecting.

It stayed with me because it’s true: “Doing as much as I could be” at one thing isn’t the life I’ve chosen. And this truth gave me a deep pang in my chest. I was born part old lady, which means I do a lot of thinking about the fact that I only get so much time. And many writers and others whose work lingers in this world choose one thing to do with most of their time. But that isn’t my life.

There was a time about ten years back that I stared down my own version of “really successful.” I’d been living for success for years, and I wasn’t all the way unhappy, but I was unhappy, and I was tired of it. So I took my feet in another direction, and then another, and another. The first pivot felt impossible, but the next was easier.

There’s truth in what Warren Buffett says. My version of “really successful” would have meant saying no to much more. Instead, I said yes to things I never planned to, like moving to Denver and having a baby and taking a law job with a different title than “partner” and writing regularly here. Most of these moves were based on intuition more than logic, and none was made with a goal of being really successful.

As I made these choices, something interesting happened: Time gradually went from being an enemy to a friend. In the before times, when success was my main goal, I felt frantic almost always. There was never enough give in my schedule, which made it impossible to see fitting in things like raising a small human or writing novels. Notions of “work-life balance” didn’t help either, because when my ship felt off-kilter, the other parts of who I am weren’t developed enough to turn to.

These days, time mostly seems to work itself out. I make my schedules, which are different every day. On a good day, there’s a chunk of law brief editing, a chunk of novel editing, and check ins with my daughter peppered throughout the day. And unlike what I used to think, having three focuses doesn’t mean that one is just the “day job” or only one really matters. They all matter quite a bi. The balance is good, and what I mean by this—because “balance” has become a buzzword—is not that every day has just the right amount of time for everything or that I always feel balanced. It’s that when one area needs a little more of me, I sense it. And when I put more attention there, the ship rights itself.

I never thought I’d be this happy. I wasn’t for a long time.

If the cost is real success, it’s worth it.