The Juggler

I've been struggling over the past few days and it may help for me to put it out there.

Have you ever seen one of those jugglers that juggle like 20 different objects?  They're awesome to watch.  Everything is going in the smooth circle and it doesn't make sense how a single person can juggle that many items.  If the juggler drops even 1 object though, they lose balance and everything falls to the ground in a big, fantastic, chaotic mess.  It seems they can't just drop 1 item and throw it back into the loop or just move on without it.  Somehow dropping the 1 item starts a chain reaction and the rest follow very quickly.  So, the juggler can start over again.  Pick up one item at a time and start slowly to build back up to the original 20 and everything starts to go smoothly again.  Although, sometimes, the juggler is too flustered after dropping everything they can't seem to get things going again.  They just keep dropping items.

The analogy of the above juggler feels like me sometimes.  I juggle so much in my life and as long as I stay on top of everything life is good and everything runs smoothly, but if I "drop" something, it starts a chain reaction and my whole life seems to crash.  I start to rebuild everything and we continue.  It's just this big cycle for me.  Only this time, I'm the juggler that's too flustered and I just keep dropping everything.  It doesn't help that I have very little say in what I control.

I'm feeling very overwhelmed and flustered at the moment.  Every little thing that goes wrong now, I get all emotional and start crying.  I missed an employee meeting the other day.  In all the time I've worked there, I've never missed even 1 meeting.  I'm always on time to the meetings, sometimes even early.  But somehow I mixed things up on my calendar and it didn't get entered correctly.  I know I entered it, but it wasn't there come time for the meeting.  I checked all over my little electronic calendar and was unable to locate it.  (My husband and I joked that it's going to show up in 6 years)  My boss wasn't mad at all about it.  She laughed it off, said I've never missed a meeting before and she's glad I was OK, because when I didn't show up, she was worried.  She gave me the information I needed from the meeting and every thing's fine now.  Except I started crying when I realized I'd missed the meeting.

My husband's work is talking about changing every body's schedule and this has me stressed too.  I started crying when he told me.

I started crying when my husband's ex wife said she was going to move her vacation because she couldn't afford to go when she planned.  This could throw a huge wrench in our summer plans and she could try to prevent us from going on our trip.  (This is the exact reason I hate straying from the court order as far as schedule is concerned).

My co-workers and clients at work aren't helping either.  My boss has actually had to tell me, what they

And it seems to me that I have to fight, dig in my heels and refuse to budge if I am going to put myself anywhere on my priority list.  No one in my life takes no for an answer from me because they're all so used to me taking care of them and making their lives easier.  I don't want to be mean but I feel like I have to in order to just take care of myself for once.

The people at church are even making me feel guilty.  I want to drop a volunteer opportunity I've been doing because it's a stress now with my family and if I get this new job (fingers still crossed), I won't be able to do it anymore because I won't get off work in time.  They're making me feel guilty and telling me I can take this other job I really don't want and I could still do it.

I'm just glad my husband will be home tonight.  I need him today.