Every week or two I find myself clutching one last ball in disbelief. It's always rather hard to face up to your throbbing toe and missing balls when you envision yourself keeping at least a dozen flaming chainsaws (I mean, why stop at torches?) in the air all at once. When you're a Mom and you get down to one ball that means people get food and clothes and that's it. When you're down to one ball you can't even guarantee that the floor is clean.
There is a part of me that really wishes I was ball-size. I could just roll right after them into the odd corner, make friends with the dustbunnies, and never have to come out, never drop anything on my toes, never be left red-faced from embarrassment and exertion staring at the world clutching my one ball.
I watch other women juggle. Some of them are truly amazing. Very few of them successfully juggle the things I dream of juggling, but then I usually don't take laws like physics and gravity into account in my dreams. Many of them (most even?) are quite a bit better at it than I am.
I'm not really concerned with what they juggle though, or if they're better. I'm just trying to figure out what exactly I ought to be picking back up (since physics and gravity do exist) and exactly what rhythm I have to hit to keep everything in the air. I tend to pick up too many things. Like facebook, and twitter, and then "Bam!" splat goes the blog.
It's getting easier to figure out which balls need to be picked back up (like sketching), when I can toss in another one (Hello! Is this an actual blog post?), and which ones need to be left to make friends with the dust bunnies. I've gotten so good at retrieving the things I drop that the dust bunnies actually had to move elsewhere.
I don't write for the people who can keep a dozen chainsaws in the air all at once, I write for the people who, like me, drop their three little measly colored coded balls on their toes. I write to let them that know that there is no shame in goose eggs and bandaged toes.
