I’ve been all over the place lately: emotionally, physically. Missing birthdays, friend outings, skipping workouts, canceling plans, eating weird foods that I know my body doesn’t like, traveling, delaying responses to emails and texts, learning a whole new industry and the dynamics that encompass it, stumbling and fumbling along the way, relearning what it feels like to love and be vulnerable, too.

It’s been a new chapter of change and I’m trying to find balance.

Picture a mason jar filled with sand and water. Shake it all up. Contained chaos. That’s what life feels like.

The sand is starting to settle and I’m beginning to feel like I’m finding balance, but there are remnants of the chaos I know will take time to dissolve. Letdowns and disappointments I’ve created. Relationships I’ve left unattended, tested.

Relationships are a huge part of my life and always have been, but right now the relationship that needs the most attention is the one I have with myself. It’s the only way I know I’ll be able to love the people who mean the most to me. My family, my partner, my friends. The new, beautiful people who enter my life every day.

Early morning NPR: online therapy. An option to consider. Space to download my thoughts and feelings, insecurities and fears. A compass of my past, potential tool for my future.

As I listen to the radio I think how pathetic I am for feeling the way I do about my life and its contained chaos, knowing that there are people dealing with worse pains, sorrows, changes.

Shifting, I stop judging myself. That’s the thing about life. We all have our mason jars of sand and water. Unsettling and settling. Remnants to dissolve. Remnants to love.

I’m on a journey to find balance.

I’m not sure it ever really ends.

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Here’s a meditation I just learned. Might help you out on your journey, too.