If I were a tightrope walker (I am not a tightrope walker), I would say that balance requires awareness and presence.

At least, at first.

If you've learned to walk a tightrope (or ride a bike), you'll know that eventually the micro-movements required to keep you upright become automatic and unthinking. I'm not sure if life balance is the same - perhaps it is for some, though I haven't found it to be so, or perhaps there are too many variables for it to be a fair comparison.

Humans aren't machines.

Artists aren't art factories.

Parents aren't child rearing robots.

But often we bow to the pressure of a society that seems to think we should be.

Do more, be more, get better, fit more in, set some goals, achieve them, set some more… now do the thought experiment - can you hit your ten year goals in six months? Do you feel as tired reading this as I do writing it? We're not ingenious contraptions meant for perpetual expansion.

It's going to come as zero surprise to you when I tell you that having a regular creative practice can help you live better.

Aside from the mental health benefits that come with focussed creative time, it’s related to the idea that how you do one thing is how you do everything - you tend to have ways of thinking and feeling and moving through the world that are similar, no matter the circumstances you find yourself in.

And so if you regularly play with a blank page (or in your kitchen or your garden or sewing room - however you like to create) and watch what you do and how you do it, the parts that feel fun and the parts that challenge you (and how you deal with those challenges), you might start to see connections with how you live life in the world outside your blank page or art journal or kitchen or garden or wherever you like to create.

Want an example? Read on...

Given how popular the phrase 'do it anyway' is, I imagine that works for a lot of people, but for me - even thinking about that just makes me kind of tired. Life is busy and fast, and getting faster all the time. Being an adult sometimes feels like an endurance marathon where someone keeps moving the finish line further and further away. Do we really need to push more, and to do things scared?

I wonder if the answer might be no, at least, not all the time. Or maybe no, not that scared.