The Art of Juggling

The juggle is real.

Hello lovely readers! Today’s newsletter really hit home for me, and I think it’s something that will resonate with a lot of you too. If it does and you have a moment to spare, I’d love to hear from you—like the post, leave me a comment, or reply to this email. As always, thank you for being here!

JUGGLE: to handle or deal with several things (such as obligations) at one time so as to satisfy often competing requirements. To practice deceit or trickery on. To manipulate or rearrange especially to achieve a desired end. (Source: Merriam-Webster)

As much as I try not to subscribe to the myth of having it all, I inevitably find myself performing a complex juggling act every day. I think that I can and should be able to keep all the balls in the air. When I do, it feels like pulling off a magic trick. When I don’t, the balls feel as though they are made of lead and overwhelm sits in.

I recently saw a quote from Nora Ephron, pulled from an interview in which she responded to the question of how she juggles it all—writing, movies, motherhood, family, etc.—with:

“The key to juggling is to know that some of the balls you have in the air are made of plastic and some are made of glass.”

This brilliant framework has been so helpful to me as I transition to working more hours each week. Plastic balls such as folding clothes, cleaning my office, and making dinner can fall to the ground. They’ll bounce, or else I can pick them back up as I’m able. This shift has meant prioritizing glass balls like quality time with my daughter on her birthday, showing up for myself with daily movement, and time to connect with my spouse whether it’s morning sips on the porch or our evening TV ritual.

Sometimes I think that the composition of the balls can morph—like maybe some plastic balls become glass balls (like cleaning the kitchen to stave off ants), or some glass balls become more of a glass-plastic hybrid (like my memoir revision this week). I haven’t decided if this is helpful since it adds to the mental load of keeping track of ever-shifting priorities.

I was surprised to discover that juggle can also mean deceit or trickery. The etymology of juggle can be traced back to the late fourteenth century to jogelen, “entertain by clowning or doing conjuring tricks,” and from Old French jogler “play tricks, sing songs,” and from Latin ioculari “to jest.” (Source: The Online Etymology Dictionary)

It’s no wonder that it feels like a magic trick when I can pull off keeping all the balls in the air. But when I can’t, and I refuse to drop some of the plastic ones, the only one I’m deceiving is myself. Trying to constantly manipulate a set of ever-changing priorities is crazy-making—and to what end? Sometimes I ask myself What are you trying to prove?

In the scope of work, my ambition feeds this idea that I can keep catching whatever is lobbed at me, especially as a freelance journalist, because if I don’t I’ll either be letting someone down, decreasing my chances of future work, or passing up a valuable opportunity. But the reality is that we cannot do it all, and even if we find great fulfillment in our work, it is not the end all be all. Consistently performing at a high standard is not the glass ball I make it out to be. It’s more like one of those glass-plastic hybrid balls. It will be able to cushion the fall when you let it drop.

This makes room for the glass ball that is the most important of all—yourself. For me, this ball is often the first to shatter or it doesn’t even figure into the juggling act to begin with. It is the easiest one to set aside and the one that has the greatest effects on the other glass balls in my life, like family, friends, and community. I realized that by first picking up the glass ball that is me, and juggling the other glass balls around its flow, is what makes juggling not merely a magic trick, but life magic.