Imagine life as a game in which you are juggling five balls in the air. You name them – work, family, health, friends, and spirit – and you’re keeping all of these in the air. You will soon understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. But the other four balls – family, health, friends, and spirit – are made of glass. If you drop one of these, they will be irrevocably scuffed, marked, nicked, damaged, or even shattered. They will never be the same. You must understand that and strive for balance in your life.
Brian Dyson (b. 1935) CEO of Coca-Cola Enterprises
Successfully balancing work and life requires flexibility.
In my twenties, I lived with my husband about 50 miles from New York City on a gorgeous estate in a garage apartment. Really – it was in the garage. The landlord complained that our cat got paw prints on his Jaguar. (Seemed appropriate to me.)
Every day I commuted two hours to work in the city and two hours back again, except for the days when the trains broke down and the commute took longer. My routine was to get up at 5:15AM, somehow dress for success on my starting pay, leave the garage before 6:00AM, drive to the local train station, and catch the 6:20AM train.
Back in those days the trains had diesel engines, and they would come roaring into the station trailing black smoke that filled all the train cars. Amazingly, it was a challenge in the morning to find a seat amidst all the people who had gotten up even earlier and who lived even further away from the city than I did.
The train would lurch toward New York, picking up more tired commuters until the aisles were full. Outside the window, the view would become increasingly urban and ugly until the train chugged through the burned-out buildings of Harlem and finally entered the blackness beneath the city.
The trains had neither heat nor air conditioning, and were prone to problems like “leaf slip” in the fall, ice on the power lines in the winter, lightning strikes in the spring, and people jumping in front of them all year long. One morning a woman showed up at the station stark naked, knowing only that she had to catch the 6:20.
From Grand Central Station I would pick up a bus to the Lincoln Center area. On the rare day when everything went correctly, I could be unloading my briefcase and drinking my first cup of coffee by 8:30AM.
When I started out, I worked for the editor-in-chief of a publishing house. My boss was a tyrant, the workload was inhuman, and from time to time throughout the day I would realize that I was so stressed I had stopped breathing. Injustice was swift and sure. As I gained more responsibility, I started to wear only New York black so I would always be dressed for my own funeral, real or imagined.
By 6:00PM it was time to reverse the whole commute – leave the office, catch a bus back to Grand Central, catch the 6:27PM train, and watch the landscape through the window change from dark and crowded back to bucolic and beautiful. After the train passed a few open fields I would get off at my station, find my car, and drive the final twenty minutes home. With luck, I might make it home by 8:30PM – a typical 15 hour workday.
One evening in the winter I turned on the engine of my little VW and realized I couldn’t take it any more. I leaned my head against the steering wheel and started to sob. Until a Good Samaritan knocked on my window, I didn’t realize that with the engine running and my head on the steering wheel, I looked like I was killing myself. The glass ball for “spirit” had crashed to the ground. I had become the poster child for work/life imbalance.
Rubber bounces, glass breaks -- take care of your glass balls.
Eventually I quit working at the publishing house and went freelance. I found myself gasping for air, taking long, deep breaths in my kitchen as I learned how to breathe again. I contacted every editor I had ever known in the publishing world and asked if they had any manuscripts that needed to be edited. They did. I kept the rubber ball for “work” in the air.
My husband is an artist, and we never had enough money. So now I was freelance, but I worked all the time, one year even through Christmas. I worked through two pregnancies without taking any time to enjoy them. I went back to work immediately after the kids were born, and never stopped to appreciate their infancy. In the freelance world, out of sight is out of mind. However, I knew my children were the meaning of my life, and I kept the glass ball for “family” in the air as best I could.
I started getting migraines, and they started lasting longer and longer. I started taking strong medications and steroids. Eventually I developed Cushing’s syndrome from the steroids, and the glass ball for “health” broke. I became fat, and exhausted, and unable to keep my obligations, and the rubber ball for “work” landed with a thud and rolled away.
We could not pay the medical bills, we ran out of money, and we lost our house. My husband lost his teaching job and went on unemployment – something previously unimaginable. We moved away. When I developed cancer, people disappeared from my life. I think our problems were just too much for them. The glass ball for “friends” fell with a crash.
I had to get off the steroids and recover from the cancer. For a long time I was mostly in bed. I developed arthritis in my back, so today I can’t stand up long enough to cook dinner. All the imbalance of the previous 30 years caught up with me. The only ball that remained in the air was “family” – which for me means my husband and my children. I decided to move closer to the kids.
We found a lovely rental house on — I am not making this up — Hope Street. Within weeks I had to have emergency gallbladder surgery and I wondered what the gods wanted from me – but for some reason, removing my gallbladder made my brain sharper than it had been for a long time. I have a new doctor who does not have a tantrum when I mention the word “Internet.”
I still can’t walk, but my brain is OK. I went and found the rubber ball for work and gave it a bounce. I am now engaged in a new book project.
Along the way, I have found great kindness in unexpected places. Today we have interesting, friendly neighbors. My husband has found a little teaching work. Money is always a problem, but our lives are pared down to the essentials. The kids, who are 23 and 27, are busy, but they stop by when they can, and I will shamelessly do things like order their packages delivered to my house so they need to visit in order to pick them up.
With the new house, and the new friends, and the new job, and the new proximity to my kids, I have just recently picked up the glass ball for “spirit.” I turn it over in my hands, looking at all the cracks from years past. I still look at other people and wonder why their lives are so easy. But now I can look at my own life and see it not in terms of so many losses, but so many gifts.
I launch the last ball into the air and look up. It catches the sun as all five balls – work, family, health, friends, and spirit – rotate slowly above me. And it only took 57 years to get here.
Your turn: How do you juggle your 5 balls? Do you let the rubber one bounce?
Image credits: Image 1 – negosyongmaypuso dot blogspot dot com, Image 2 – happyfamilies dot blogspot dot com
About Nellie Sabin
Ouch. I need pay more attention to my five balls!
Heather – Dollar Store Crafts recently posted..Man Crafts: office supply grappling gun
Don’t we all, Heather! Thanks for stopping by.
Hi Heather – Sometimes being out of balance just sneaks up on you while you’re busy looking the other way! Thanks for reading.
- Nellie
Hello Nellie,
Thank you so much for that. It’s an amazing story which resonates with me right now.
I am currently off work due to stress – been a couple of weeks now. Don’t think I’ll be going back anytime soon. Let’s see how high my rubber ball bounces!
I am happy to hear that your spirit ball (and the others I hope), may have some cracks and the odd scratch here and there, but remains unbroken.
My very best wishes to you from Scotland.
Hamish
Hamish recently posted..Snuff – The 37th Discworld Novel
Hi Hamish,
Thank you for understanding my story. In retrospect, I would say everything had to fall apart before things changed.
It sounds like getting away from your work was a good thing! I am quite certain something different and better will come along for you.
Here is a poem I like – you may have seen it already:
Come to the edge.
We might fall.
Come to the edge.
It’s too high!
COME TO THE EDGE!
And they came
And he pushed
And they flew.
Let me know how things work out for you!
Best wishes from this side of the pond,
- Nellie
Sharing a story such as this is inspiring and beautiful. If only one life is changed by a shift in perspective it will have been worth it. I want you to know you have changed mine. Let the rubber ball bounce and cherish the glass ones. I will try my best!
xoxo,
Amy
Amy that was so sweet of you! Thanks so much.
When I first heard my cancer diagnosis, all I wanted was to have my children near me. It took them a little while to get there, but they came, and I felt so blessed. It was a very clarifying moment. The other stuff became just “stuff.” We have to deal with it, but it doesn’t wait for us while we’re having surgery!
Hope that makes sense. I’m glad you are a faster learner than I was!
My best wishes to you,
- Nellie
Oh no. This is me. My glass ball is shattered, I’m afraid. I am all work, work, work, school, school, school, and at the end of the day, the only time I have for me is spent catching up on my social media and blog (which I love, by the way…it has become my first step toward saving a little something for myself, thus taping my glass ball back together, slowly but surely). I love to write. It makes me happy. I wish I had the guts to pursue it. Unfortunately, I also love my teaching job, and I love having food on the table, so there’s always something else to consider. (P.S. I love that I must confirm I am not a “dirty rotten spammer.” Hilarious!)
Laura@Catharsis recently posted..Community Education: Keeping Women in the Kitchen One Song at a Time
Hi Laura!
I’m so glad you stopped by. The spirit of imbalance tries to boss me around every once in a while and as a free journo and owner of a new and growing (3 employees) full service content, collateral, copy, and all things writing, this thing sucks up the day like a sponge. The temptation beckons during those times when I am exhausted and under the most pressure, but my Dragonslayer and childrens voices from the family room quickly break the spell and pull me to where the balance and joy reside — with them. It’s really the only thing that actually recharges me in a complete way so that I can tackle work with the eyes and sparkle of a well rested entrepreneur bent on ruling the world (at least my part of it). Teaching should afford you some relatively lengthy stretches of time — during holiday breaks and summer vacation — where you can block out writing time. Plan the time blocks well before the break and discuss how happy having that time makes you — it gives you the sparkle to shine for them that you wouldn’t other wise have. Simple. Offer kids and even hubs a reward of some sort for giving you each block without unnecessary disturbance. Then, it’s up to you to make it happen. Go for it. You have the talent that is the fabric of highly successful, adored authors. Don’t betray that gift.
I’m glad you like the dirty rotten scoundrel comment. At first, I feared that visitors, unaware of my flippant humor and easy way, would take offense, but everyone has laughed. Argggh!
xo
Samantha
I can only imagine how sucked up time becomes in your line of work, Samantha. I need to be pulled “where the balance and joy reside” more often. There simply isn’t enough time in the day, and I have to start acting on the knowledge that my family is most important, so if something for work has to wait, so be it.
Laura@Catharsis recently posted..That Place Between Ignorance and Knowledge: A Tricky S.O.B.
Hi Laura, and thank you so much for stopping by. It does take some adjusting and experimenting to find the ideal balance for you and your family. I suppose it’s an ongoing process — as life and your family’s schedule changes, you’ll need to adjust your ideal balance raitos accordingly.
Hi Laura,
I hope you don’t mind, but I looked at your blog, and it’s hilarious. Also, I used the EXACT SAME (redundancy for emphasis) graphic on my Tumblr (http://nelliesabin.tumblr.com/page/3), which means we have to be best friends. I mean, if that’s OK with you and all. I also signed up to follow you on Twitter, but I promise I’m not a dirty rotten stalker. Oh, and I read your article for Samantha on pediatric stroke. Ouch.
You certainly have a lot going on in your life. I worry about all the energy it requires. When I was your age I had an AMAZING energy level and could head the PTA, cook rice-flour muffins for the allergic child, make a Halloween costume for the older child, deliver an edited manuscript to New York, and maybe even have friends over to dinner. But I did not pace myself – I had to do it ALL, and it all had to be PERFECT. When I got sick, I found myself lying on the couch, wide awake but unable to move because I had burned up all that lovely energy. Please don’t end up like me.
You say you love your job, so at least all those hours of work, work work are mostly “good” stress, and not “bad” stress. And as Samantha wisely points out, there are weeks and even months when you can be both available to your family AND spend some time on your writing.
Eventually I hope you can make more time for your writing. I don’t want you to get to be 100 years old and realize you never wrote enough. You already have a bunch of blog followers so that must be very rewarding. You clearly have a way with words, and that is not something to take for granted. To you it just comes naturally, but believe me, most people do NOT write so comfortably.
Have you done a longer version of the stroke story? I’m sure you could write that up and get it published in either a newsstand magazine or an online magazine. Or maybe you want to go for the whole enchilada and write a memoir someday.
Anyway, thanks so much for reading my cautionary tale, and good luck putting your glass ball back together. I hear plunging it into fire works best.
With all best wishes,
- Nellie
Thanks, Nellie! Your words of encouragement and your compliments feel great! I would love to have my story published some day. I think there’s a bit of fear coupled with a lack of time keeping me from pursuing something like that. One day, right? One day. At any rate, I visited you on Tumblr, and I am pretty confident we are on the same wavelength on some level. There certainly are days I don’t love my job, but for the most part, I love WHY I’M DOING IT, at the very least. At any rate, I am going to heed your advice to the best of my ability
Laura@Catharsis recently posted..That Place Between Ignorance and Knowledge: A Tricky S.O.B.
The “Five Ball” story, which is credited to Brian Dyson, is almost a direct quote from the book “Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas” by James Patterson. It’s on about page 23, I think. In the book, the 5th ball is “Integrity”, which is ironic when you consider someone has apparently plagiarized this quote.
Hi Alice,
Thank you for taking the time to comment on 10 time published author and sought after editor, Nellie Sabin’s article about juggling the 5 balls of life.
That said, I want to address your accusing Ms. Sabin of plagiarism.
According to the Webster dictionary, the definition of plagiarism is as follows:
The practice of taking someone else’s work or ideas and passing them off as one’s own.
When I look at the Ms. Sabin’s post, the first thing I see is a gray box containing the famous quote by Brian Dyson about the five balls. In that gray box, directly after the quote, I see Mr. Dyson’s name. Literary folks consider this attribution, meaning that Ms. Sabin used proper professional etiquette and took care to ensure that no one got the idea that she came up with the concept.
James Patterson: I’m assuming that this highly successful and talented author has read the famous quote from Mr. Dyson along with countless other culturally aware Americans. Perhaps, he even read it prior to writing his book, Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas, and incorporated the concept within the storyline.
As luck would have it, the team I’ve assembled for celebrity procurement for the Scars R Sexy campaign are working closely with a media strategist who develops release and promotion strategies for Patterson and a myriad other celebrities. I’ll have my partner, Amy Shoultz, Ph.D., show her Ms. Sabin’s post (you know, just for grins) and pass it along to Patterson. He can comment on whether or not Sabin has plagiarized his book as he signs the Scars R Sexy t-shirt for the fundraiser.
Dr. Shoultz takes care of communications with the intellectual property attorney our company retains. I can assure you, he will take a moment to look over these items that concern you to determine if anything untoward has taken place.
We’ll let you know how it all turns out.
Samantha Gluck
Owner, All Media Freelance, LLC
Co-Founder, RebelSpark Creative Visionary Consulting
Association of Health Care Journalists
Society of Professional Journalists
#BOSS
Dear Alice,
Thank you for pointing out the similarity between Mr. Dyson’s quote and Mr. Patterson’s. Apparently other people have also questioned this, because Mr. Patterson has the following displayed prominently on his website:
“Where did the story of the five balls in Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas come from?
Imagine life is a game in which you are juggling five balls. The balls are called work, family, health, friends, and integrity. And you’re keeping all of them in the air. But one day you finally come to understand that work is a rubber ball. If you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls–family, health, friends, integrity–are made of glass. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, nicked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the lesson of the five balls, you will have the beginnings of balance in your life.
One of the most dependably recurring questions I’ve gotten over the years is where did the above story of the five balls–which appears in Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas–come from?
I first heard a version of it from my grandmother when I was a kid, but-though she was a creative soul-I expect it pre-dates her. All I know is it’s been with us for a long time and has been told in many places–from Sunday sermons to a 1991 commencement address at Georgia Tech by Brian G. Dyson, former Vice Chairman of The Coca-Cola Company.
And I certainly am right there with everybody who resonates so strongly with it. It’s one of those true bits of wisdom that, unlike us, never grows old.”
Mr. Patterson’s book was published in 2008 – 17 years after Mr. Dyson used the analogy of the five balls in his commencement address.
I used Mr. Dyson’s version, which refers to the fifth ball as “spirit,” and is available at http://way2goal.com/words/messages/11.htm (or simply Google “Dyson the five balls”).
Unlike most people, I have never read anything by Mr. Patterson.
I hope you are not accusing ME of plagiarism, because the idea is frankly ridiculous. In my article, Mr. Dyson’s quote is set off and attributed appropriately.
I have never plagiarized anything in my life and never will. Plagiarism is the worst accusation you can make of a writer – so in the future, I recommend you do not use this word lightly, especially without doing any easily available background research.
- Nellie Sabin
Nellie recently posted..Attack of the Giant Squid
Nellie and Samantha…tremendous responses!
This post came up on a Google search I did after hearing the story of the 5 balls myself, as did an excerpt from James Patterson’s book. Your attribution looked just perfect to me.
Jenny Hansen recently posted..A Story of Balls and Work-Life Balance…How Do You Prioritize?
Hi Jenny,
I saw this the other day and went to your site to view your awesome post. I wanted to comment and thank you, but got called away. Thank you so much! Nellie is an amazing author.
XO
Samantha
Hi Nellie, as always, I throughly enjoyed your well-crafted and evocative post. You have such a natural honest voice–you alway hold my interest from start to finish. I admire your ability to sustain an image (in this case the 5 now controversial balls!) over the course of your piece without becoming monotonous or gimmicky. Whether the fifth ball represents “integrity” or “spirit”, you’ve got them both in spades. Am sure that our new reader Alice has gotten that sorted out by now as well! Here at FWD, we love going straight to the source. We are pleased that the celebrated Mr. Patterson is participating in our Scars R Sexy campaign and, rest assured, we will get the scoop!
Thanks for your kind words, Doctor!
I am loving the Scars R Sexy campaign, and it’s not just because I have so many of them! It’s exciting to see this in its early stages, because I believe it will someday become part of everyone’s awareness. It’s one of those “blinding flash of the obvious,” “why didn’t I think of that?” ideas that makes total sense. We should all rock our scars, emotional or physical, since they make us who we are.
It’s hard to imagine anyone getting through life unscarred. Besides, I’d rather skin my knee sliding for home than be a spectator at life.
- Nellie
Nellie recently posted..Attack of the Giant Squid