Life is all about balance. Balancing your schedule, balancing your checkbook, balancing your relationships, balancing your emotions, and even more incalculable, balancing your wardrobe.

Planning for life’s balancing act is an impossibility. I mean how do you plan balance, especially IRL? What does that even mean? Can you even do this? The short answer with the longest, infinite meaning, is yes.

I find myself challenged daily with the act of balance. I can never quite honestly understand how to make balance happen. It’s about as hard as making fetch happen. If you are old enough for that reference, you are here for this post!

So is balance when you can multitask and complete all the tasks efficiently or maybe not efficiently but without major consequences of change or pivot? Let’s face it Work in Processors, just getting up, getting yourself put together, and out the door, can provide a 1/2 hour comedic sitcom, or drama, depending upon if you aren’t bloated and had decent sleep.

Cue the funny sitcom music, here’s how the morning goes down. The alarm goes off, and that reminder sound gets swatted down, hard, immediately, if not sooner. You shut it down about as fast as an inappropriate picture that flashed on your screen showing co-worker's pics from your trip. You know that panic, heart racing, heated sensory response because it was the sexy :%$^* pic. You know the one, when you were trying to entice your husband to leave work. But, I digress… So your alarm response is about as <QUICK AS THAT>.

So, sidebar aside, you swat this alarm down, twice, at least. Reluctantly, you get out of bed, having lay there as if you have no place to be. Springing up quickly, the thought of coffee brings you to your feet. Yet, in reality, drat, the dog needs to go pee, a priority over your own. Next, you get your coffee, only to see that little face and tail wagging, daring you to pour your own cup before Fido’s ever-important breakfast, which is, (news flash), their whole morning. Which in comparison to your own coffee is just a fraction of a fraction, of your day!

Next, you stroll to the bathroom to wash your face, and warm the shower to a bearable yet wake able temperature, not too hot, not warm but definitely not cold. NO ONE ever does that! Yet, as though your bathroom is an obstacle course, as you grab a towel, and tie your hair back, three texts take precedence over cleanliness. Another quick swipe to IG then TikTok captures your attention, who doesn’t love Matt Rife or little baby goats in pajamas? Then you realize you have t-minus 12 minutes to be dressed and out the door. But, those baby goats.

As you finally find yourself in the car, a revelation hits you. You forgot your lifeline, your only reason for surviving daily, “insert preferred cuss word” my phone is on the bathroom counter!” Immediately, a conflict of position and time. A next quick flash, 2nd revelation, you never had that coffee. A decision flashes across your brain like lighted neon question marks on your dashboard, do I grab the coffee through the drive-through first or do I turn around? “Get the coffee, get the coffee” chants like a chorus of beats, a steady pulse in your mind. Giving in to the caffeine draw, you circle toward the drive-through.

Again, cue the TV show's comedic music, referencing the irony of the decision-making of your situation: the knowing and relatable laughter because revelation number 3, you can’t pay for coffee… I pay from an app on my phone. Cue the credits, fade out music, and pan away in the scene, as your 4th and final revelation, you are subject to pay with an actual card (no one uses cash). In TV land, there would be a floating cloud bubble above your head showing flashbacks of your bathroom counter, and baby goats. You shrug with that go figure, life is good TV sitcom shrug. You have just concluded your episode of I Love Lucy or household Survivor, you choose...

You know how this morning played out. Was that balance? Or is that a daily occurrence? Do we simply exchange the single word called “balance” and in place, replace with these two words, “managed chaos?” Did modern culture find a polite and seemingly poised word to be used as a label to capture our routine daily, normalizing the craziness? So I leave you with the ask, what is balance?

3 last-minute getting ready/out-the-door tips:

1. Headbands, any age, cover bed head or barely fresh hair, enhance any outfit, especially if you have to recycle the same shirt under your blazer or cardigan, the view is upwards not straight on.
2. Skinny black pants/jeans take you to hipster sophistication. The not trying, yet “I tried” look. Think Meghan Markle-esque.
3. Trust me on this, a belt, wide or skinny, around a cardigan can change anything to dressy and classically professional.