It’s the day after Labor Day.  I’m working on easing back into work after a 4 day weekend which is always a challenge.  As I came downstairs to my ground floor home office this morning, I was struck with a startling thought.  There before me lay a half dozen categories of my life.  Work, spiritual life, personal to dos/projects, workout equipment, hobbies, books to read.  Not to mention my wife and 2 girls upstairs going about their days.

My ‘work space’ was actually the equivalent of a multi-use recreation center.

At any moment, I could plug into a book, knock out the nearest/easiest to do, journal, workout, work, and the list goes on.  This is the struggle I have faced ever since covid.  Work-life balance.  How to truly do it well.  How to really integrate the various facets of my life without neglecting what’s important while maintaining integrity and pursuing diligence in all I do.

It has honestly been an ebb and flow with some wild pendulum swings.  But the challenge comes from the blending of these categories into a single physical space.  The need for internal boundaries has never been greater.

And as this all dawned on me, I resolved to slow down.  And not just for that moment, but for the day. Go slow enough so that I could decide what ‘space’ I was entering.

What I found was that this is especially true once logged on for work.  The accessibility is endless. 

Will I check the Yankees score first thing? 

Or do I have the self-control to wait until later? 

LinkedIn for a healthy dose of comparison? 

How mindlessly I wander into these ‘spaces’ not realizing that I’m transporting my mental life to wildly different experiences all while sitting comfortably in my chair.  I’m pretty much numb to this whiplash effect as many likely are.  Numbed by the speed at which I move.  And so all the lines blur together.

But today, I decided to take it slow.

So each email, slack, new tab, physical movement from my desk, I tried to do intentionally and thoughtfully.  Very quickly I realized that my head moves 10x faster than my heart.  That’s probably a massive underestimate.  With each move, I noticed my heart would come trailing behind, as if being dragged along.

This does not feel sustainable.

This feels entirely like a momentary thought experiment.

But the integration and peace I feel (not to mention the presence with which I can enter conversations and thoughtfulness with which I can plan my week) makes this worth coming back to.

How do I sustain this?