The Battle for Balance

One of the things I’m struggling with most at the moment is finding balance. The balance between work and home is alway difficult and it’s not something I am doing very well.

Work is a busy place to be right now, in fact it has been all year. As well as my classroom, I am responsible for the school choir, work with our school Kapa Haka group, have been involved in film projects for DECD and AITSL, am on the Personel Advisory Committee (PAC), working with students in the New Media Awards program, and have worked with students to present lectures at UniSA. Being term 4, we are currently writing reports, planning graduation, looking at class placement and planning items for end of year concerts.

I’m not complaining, and I know that I’m certainly not the only teacher with a high workload. In fact, if I had to choose something to cut from my list, I would find it difficult. These are aspects of my work life that make this job something that I love doing.

But it’s a lot.

Home life isn’t much simpler. As foster carers, my wife, kids and I share our home with 2 other children (4 kids in total and until recently, 5). We have had school football, calisthenics, scouts, birthday parties, kids social lives (none of our own!), housework and all of the other things that come with normal family life.

So, with all that makes up our lives, how do we find a better balance? How do I do my job well and be a husband and father that is not only present, but able to give my family my complete focus as they deserve? It’s difficult, but we are giving it a good crack!

Last school holidays I made the decision to switch off, and disappear from work. This meant deleting certain apps from my phone for that time (sorry Twitter) and making a conscious effort to clear my head of the ever growing ‘to do’ list. It was a well timed decision. Until I switched off, I wasn’t really aware of how quickly I was running myself into the ground. I became aware that my kids had been (at times) walking on egg shells around me, and that I couldn’t remember the last time that my wife and I had taken 5 minutes of ‘time out’ for ourselves. At work, I had fallen back into my default mode and was feeling more stress than enjoyment in my job. It was a hard lesson to learn, but a necessary one.

I feel lucky that I have both positive home and work lives and know that for many people this isn’t so. I am definitely doing ‘balance’ better this term. We have ‘do not disturb’ times in place at home and are making the most of every opportunity that we have for some ‘down time’. But there is still room for improvement. If anyone has the magic recipe, I’d love to hear it.