All posts tagged: work-life balance

The Art of Balance: Creativity and Your Day-Job

My friend, Ozoz, is a phenomenon. She’s a geologist, a blogger, a recipe creator, a “traveller by plate”, a photographer and a cook. She’s also a mom. She’s  given a TedTalk, appeared on TV a few times, held a photography exhibition and recently collaborated on #TechmeetsArtng. I, on the other hand, struggle with staying awake long enough to update my blog. Forget work-life balance. I’m not even sure what that is. I think about this often: how to balance my day-job with my creative life, my social obligations, my family life, my spiritual life …and a need to sleep. Sleep is winning, I must admit. Someone commented once that she’s not sure how I do everything. The truth is, I don’t. Some days, I should be writing and I just want to bake chocolate chip cookies instead. So I bake the cookies and eat them as I mindlessly scroll through Pinterest and Twitter. I console myself with this TedTalk by Nigel Marsh. I’ve listed it in my post on the  5 TedTalks Every Young Professional …

I'm Developing A Pot-Belly and Other Sundry Matters

And it sucks. Pun intended. Saturday, I travelled to Enugu. I’d never been there, and just the thought of the journey by road filled me with all sorts of queasiness. I imagined  armed robbers, deadly encounters with speeding trailers, flat tyres, the driver missing his way… Fortunately, things weren’t so exciting. The trip was 4 hours of unrelieved tedium I spent thinking, reading, wondering. About doing the right things versus doing what was right. About things like adulthood and responsibility and maturity. Someone once wrote that the first mark of maturity is serenity. If she’s right, then I don’t think I’ll ever be mature. I can’t be serene; I have some sort of mental Tourette’s. I fidget, and when I start talking, sometimes I can’t stop. It’s who I am. I can’t say I don’t wish I was serene. I do. But it’s not a gift the good Lord has seen fit to bless me with yet. Is adulthood something that happens to you whether or not you want it, or is it something you choose? …