Juggling Time
Wade Mayer, who manages an excellent blog called Inviting Conversations: Intelligent Dialog Connecting Thoughtful People, posted a question on our LinkedIn Writer’s group. He asked whether we put our family events on our business calenders. In sharing my response, I realized how strongly I feel about the challenges facing achieving excellence in my work, my writing and my parenting.
My response:
Always! The challenge of maintaining a work:life balance is the most difficult juggling act I face. I am inspired by my job and my writing life, both hopefully impact others to create a better world.
Raising two young boys that they might become a positive force for change in the world, and sharing quality time with a life-partner who makes me a better person, demands just as much attention.
I am learning to live with the fact that I cannot promote my novels that are already published, edit the current completed manuscript, and write the next novel, while holding down a full-time (and inspiring) job, and being there for my family.
But it’s hard. I struggled with the usual winter coughs and colds for too long, and I am putting on weight. There are aches and pains that should be attended to. No time to slow down and let the body recuperate.
In the words of Jack Kerouac: “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn, like fabulous yellow Roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars, and in the middle, you see the blue center-light pop, and everybody goes ahh…“
On the Road, Jack Kerouac
And I wouldn’t want it any other way!
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Alon Shalev is the author of The Accidental Activist and A Gardener’s Tale. He is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Hillel Foundation, a non-profit that provides spiritual and social justice opportunities to Jewish students in the Bay Area. More on Alon Shalev at http://www.alonshalev.com/ and on Twitter (@alonshalevsf).
Left Coast Voices 
The photo was the best part of this post. Kerouac wrote a lot of drivel. But today, you found one of his best paragraphs. Thanks. From the road, AL