Balancing Act

I can’t handle drafts. It started in one of my first office jobs, when I kept moving my chair to another location to escape the breeze. I’ve created paper diverters with beige folders to point the air another way. I’ve had long talks with facilities directors about vent systems. Sweaters, heaters, you name it. Moving air makes my body incapable of regulating temperature.

I struggle with too much heat as well. Put this fair-skinned ginger indirect sunlight and I will expire like the frail lily I imagine myself to be, Edwardian and dramatic.

Currently I’m on my back patio, soaking up a rare March sun, contemplating balance. Generally, you’ll only find me here on a weekday when things have gone off-kilter. Something drastic has to happen to pull me away from daily work to the quiet of this space. When I’ve pushed my body and spirit so far that something gives, and I choose to step off the merry-go-round to create space for my own peace and rest and health.

The sun is lovely. And when the breeze is light I get toasty warm, not dissimilar to the excruciating bone-searing heat of our last home. It’s like a thermostat slider. Warm to cozy to hot to hot-hot-hot just like that.

Then the wind blows in. Starting with small breezes that stir the air, increasing to hair-blowing speed, then whipping unexpectedly to WINDS that spin the pinwheels, move the bare branches, and cut through my sweater, chilling me.

Sun. Wind. Sun. Wind. Back and forth. Sometimes too long hot, other times long enough cold to make me consider going inside. Changing in the nick of time so I stay.

This last year has been so much. Fear and loss, struggle and growth, stillness and home. Parts of my soul are stagnant, others barren, others overgrown. How then shall we emerge from this season? How then to engage in life and work? Where do we find balance in the doing and the being?

Sun. Wind. Sun. Wind.

And on the circle turns…