Balance is not a natural state of being | Artful Balance

I always feel either too full or about to starve.

It's a really disruptive way to be because when I feel too full, I'm regretting whatever I last ate so much of, and when I feel like I'm "about to starve," I can't stop looking forward to the next time I eat. (Or I stop whatever I'm supposed to be doing to get up and get a snack.)

Either way, as a result of having just perceived myself on the brink of starving, I often eat over-enthusiastically the next time I have a chance to.

It reminds me, much to my discouragement, that balance is not a natural state of being for me; I'll have to keep working at it only to ever approximate it.

How could I begin to stop this? How can I get lasting balance on a regular basis – times throughout the day that I feel neither hungry nor overly full?

I could stop exposing myself to extremes.

This applies to diet as well as to my emotional equilibrium.

Tapering meal sizes to smaller portions and providing myself with healthy tidbits throughout the day helps silence my appetite, contenting it.

In the same way, having experienced extreme grief, isolation, and rage through the years and at the same time being a high-functioning high achiever has trained me to think a certain way:

Unless something huge, like a monumental achievement, is happening in my life, life has receded into depressive territory.

Or even when something lovely has happened, so good that taking public transportation home has become an occasion for holding a disco via my earbuds, impulsively I remind myself that something bad could sucker punch my elation as quickly as I gained it – I could come home and my dog could be dead, or my spouse could have bad news to tell me.

Life may have exposed me to extreme up's and down's in earlier chapters, but it is not a physical law that my life will continue that way, especially when I have done much to change my circumstances.

As such, I should embrace self-soothing and appreciate uneventful moments for their simplicity without projecting my fears and restlessness onto them.

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Artful Balance © 2019

These are my personal writings curated from material produced during my structured daily writing times as well as spontaneous thoughts I manage to record. Through organizing and uploading them i hope to learn about who I am as a voice and writer and find ways to improve my writing skills. Though I feel drawn to more cerebral topics, I would like my writing to be an engaging emotional journey none the less.

Someday I hope I figure out a way to assemble my short works into something more coherent and with a more obvious purpose. But right now, these tidbits are the best I can do.