There are several new meme's going around the blogosphere. It seems that the first one on "things you should/didn't know about me" was quite popular and has been the catalyst for a variety of other memes. I've recently been tagged by David Bowles at Writing the Westward Sagas (along with some of my fellow genea-bloggers) for the Life Balance Meme. If I hadn't read the original meme post I'd have thought this was some kind of an April Fool's joke. I mean really, I'm the last person to talk about life balance. My life has no balance, never even comes close.
See, here's the thing. My sun sign is Scorpio, as is my moon sign (now you know why the sex themes sneak into my blog... it was written in the stars, I really am a sexy genealogist ;-) but my ascendant or rising sign is Libra. The rising sign is "the face you show to the world" and Libra's symbol is the scales... "balance", going hand in hand with that. So the face I show the world is one of balance but it is also my lifelong challenge.
I am not now nor have I ever been particularly good at multi-tasking. People who are capable and adept at multi-tasking have a hope of achieving balance in their lives. Those of us who are "single purpose, single focus" individuals can only have balance in our lives if we simplify, simplify, simplify. But if I simplify to that level I get bored, so that doesn't work for me. But seriously, if you think of the life of a peasant farmer (like my ancestors) where each family member had prescribed chores/tasks every day and did them linearly, which is to say one after the other (milk the cows, then clean the stalls, then curry the horses, then feed the chickens, etc. without simultaneously reading email, answering the phone, or designing web sites) you have the life my brain is wired for. But my brain also got the "smart" gene and the "artsy" gene and it makes for one messy combination. So while my brain functions best when I perform single, linear tasks, my smart and artsy genes cause me to get bored easily and come up with creative distractions ;-)
In terms of genealogy, this is why it's not enough for me to just add names to the family tree... after a short time those names get pretty boring to me. Then I want to learn about the life and times of the people involved which indulges my learning addiction and gives me a fix... for a while anyway. And when I get to the point where I can't readily find any more handy sources of information about my ancestors the Creative Gene kicks in and I start writing historical fiction novels about them, compiling cookbooks of their recipes, and making digital scrapbooks with photos, colorful papers, ephemera, buttons, bows, and whatever else I can come up with.
So then, back to life balance... I take on too many things (to satisfy my zest for learning and stave off boredom) to have balance in my life. The scales tip according to whatever facet I'm focusing on at the time and the other facets come up light. I am in no position to be offering advice on how to achieve life balance. Sorry. Those of you who strive for such a thing will have to do so without any pearls of wisdom from me.
Now if you're interested in calculating your birth chart, I can help you out with that. You can get your birth chart here, but you'll have to know your time of birth within 4 minutes for accuracy.
Since the originator of the Life Balance Meme said: "... tag five other bloggers and/or issue an open invitation to your readers to participate." I'm going to opt to issue an open invitation to all my readers to participate. Have you got any sage advice on Life Balance that you'd care to share?
Scorpio and Libra graphics courtesy of Creating Reality Astrology Resource.
