I remember being a little girl and watching a circus act on
the TV. A small woman came on dressed in a beautiful oriental looking outfit and
she was holding a stick and a plate. I watched in awe as she effortlessly span
the plate on the tiny point at the top of the stick and balanced it there as it
span round and round. Then she was given another stick, which had another plate
spinning on the top of it. Two plates spinning on two sticks! It was impressive
but a little part of me thought that I could do that two if I tried. Spinning a
plate on a stick in each hand, how hard could that be? The she was given
another one, then another one and another and this went on and on until she had
what looked like 10 plates spinning on all these different sticks in her hands.
She was amazing and something that I was sure I would never be able to do.
Little did I know that in a few years times I would be just like the lady I was
so in awe of as a little girl, minus the geisha outfit unfortunately!! In fact,
everyone is a plate spinner even if they aren’t aware they are doing.
I first started spinning plates when I moved out into our
first flat back when I was 21. I only started with 3 plates really; home,
relationships and work, and to be fair I span then pretty well. I was able to
keep onto of our 1 bedroom flat well, did a good job at work and was able to
juggle those with seeing friends and family and maintaining my relationships. As
time went on, the plates I was spinning changed. The relationship one became a
little smaller as I didn’t pay much attention to it but the home one became
bigger as we got a mortgage and moved into a bigger house. Then, in 2014, I
gained a rather large plate that took up a lot of my energy and time. I became
a Mum. That Mum plate was big, heavy and hard to balance and it took a lot of
my energy to keep in spinning. As time went on, I got the hang of spinning the
Mum plate and it got slightly easier, so I was able to start spinning a ‘fun’
plate when I went back into am dram and joined a gym. The home and work plates weren’t
super fun to spin but the ‘fun’ one was one that I really enjoyed.
Then, just when I thought that I got this whole plate
spinning malarkey down, something happened to throw me off balance. I fell
pregnant again and my Mum plate became bigger, heavier and harder to balance than
ever before. My work plate also got bigger as my blog started to gain momentum
and work started to come in. Now I was trying to juggle a huge Mum plate mixed
in with my blog work plate, normal work plate, home plate, relationships, fun
and responsibilities plates and not forgetting the odd unexpected event plate
that sometimes gets thrown into the mix too. All of a sudden, I’m thirty years
old with 2 kids, a husband and a dog, working 2 jobs and spinning 10 plates and
not doing it anywhere near as good or as gracefully as the woman I remember watching
when I was that 10 year old little girl who had no idea how to spin plates.
I constantly worry how I am going to keep all the plates up
and spinning. What if I drop one? I’m so scared that it will all get too much and
I’ll drop one or all of them and smash them! But I can’t drop one. What could I
possibly drop? They are all too important and too precious. I must keep spinning
them and I have to keep them up. But how can I do that when I don’t really even
know how to spin plates? So, I’ll do what I always do and what I’ve done since
day one. I’ll try and keep going. I’ll keep spinning the plates the best I can
because what else can I do? I’m sometimes able to pass a plate over to someone
to take the load for a moment or two but they always come back to me and it’s
my job to keep them spinning. I’m tired, my arms ache and I’m drained from all
the spinning, but I can’t stop.
I know it won’t always be like this though. Just as the
plates have grown and increased over the years, they will shrink and disappear over
time. One day my boys will be grown, and I will miss spinning that huge Mum
plate so much it will make my heart hurt. The home plate won’t be so huge as we
would have paid off our mortgage and will eventually live in a little house somewhere
with no messy fingers or toys and I’m sure I’ll miss that plate too. So, for
now, I’ll keep spinning and keep trying to be good at it because one day I won’t
have these heavy, important plates to spin anymore and as hard as it is right
now, I’m sure I’ll miss them.
Do you ever feel like your spinning plates? What do you do
to try to manage them all and keep them all spinning? Do you ever feel like you’re
going to drop them, but you can’t because they are all too precious and too
important? I’d love to know how you feel in the comments.
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