So much to blog, so little time...

Life is about balance, isn't it? As each of us is given a limited number of hours per day, we are forced to organize our lives by balancing and prioritizing the things which matter most: faith, family, friends, work, studies, sports, etc. Some perform this balancing act better than the rest while others fail miserably. However, for most of us, we find ourselves in the middle, learning as we go along.

As we progress through each stage of life, we are given more and more responsibilities. During our childhood, our obligations are minimal and typically consist of school, homework, and a few chores (of course, there are many children around the world who are forced to mature faster due to difficult circumstances and must help bear their family's financial burden by working). As we move into adolescence and young adulthood, our pre-existing responsibilities are multiplied while new ones are added, such as a job or romantic relationships. For those who go to college, paying the bills and learning to live without one's parents are new challenges we're forced to face. After college, we begin our careers, many get married, and then have children, all steps which increase our obligations exponentially, but the changes still seem gradual as we have already been preparing ourselves for these changes in the earlier stages of our lives. (Please note that this is a very broad generalization of the stages of life, and clearly there are people who choose to take their lives in other directions or in a different order).

Currently, I find myself in between the college stage and the starting "real life" stage. I am technically still in school since I just began a doctorate program here in Buenos Aires, but it is very part-time, (my class only meets one night per week). My mornings are filled with teaching English classes to a wide variety of students, some private and others through a language institute, while my afternoons are spent at River Plate training and working toward earning a place with the Argentine national team. Some evenings I give other private English lessons and the rest of the week I catch up with the readings for my doctorate class. The spaces between these activities I try to spend with friends and family here, but, often, I am so exhausted from the day, I feel as though I don't have enough energy left to enjoy my time with them. All this to explain why I haven't blogged in approximately one month...

Puerto Madero at sunrise - one benefit of walking to work early in the morning

Now is the moment when the need to prioritize comes in... I need to remember why I came to Argentina in the first place. Was it to teach English or to play soccer? Was it to write a blog on the internet or to live with my Grandma and keep her company, making up for the many years she's lived alone? Honestly, it's a mixture of all of the above, which is what has made the prioritizing process quite difficult. I am recognizing, however, how this experience is helping me prepare for more challenging times ahead, especially if I eventually get married and have a family. For now, I'm struggling to keep just my own head above water while I juggle my activities and relationships with others (both those who live here and back in the US).

Blogging is another challenge. Often, the time I set aside to blog is overrun by unplanned activities. Friends who find themselves nearby want to stop by the apartment. Friends and family in other countries who finally find a break in their equally busy schedules want to catch up via Skype. Students need to reschedule their English classes. My boss rearranges my work schedule. My professor assigns more reading and work than normal. And so on...

Time passes and I realize it's been one, two, three weeks since I've blogged. I've already forgotten the things I've noted from my day to day goings-on as blog-worthy observations. However, if one devotes too much time to blogging and not enough time to living life, what is left to blog about? "Hmmm... today my cat jumped on the table, and my Grandma got mad, but I was too busy blogging to notice." Or, "Yesterday, someone on TV mentioned something about some workers who were upset about something and were protesting somewhere in the city which caused some sort of traffic jam nearby, but I was too busy blogging about my cat jumping on the table to catch any of the details..." Okay, so I may be exaggerating slightly, but these are thoughts which cross my mind as I try to justify why I haven't blogged in so long...

Talking so much about my cat made me want to share her beauty with the blogosphere...

These are challenges which are faced by anybody who writes, whether it is simply for one's personal enjoyment or for one's career. Writing takes time and is a solitary process. For example, each blog post takes me about two hours to complete, considering the time required first to reflect on what I am going to write, the actual time spent writing, and finally the revision process. By the time I finish, I don't even want to read what I've written because I'm so sick of looking at the computer screen.

Although it may seem like a contradiction, writing is an enjoyable struggle. With each post I hope to present a new perspective not only to those who read my blog but also to myself. Blogging forces me to analyze life in a different way. Instead of passively observing situations which may be as mundane as taking public transportation (which in reality is rarely mundane in Buenos Aires...), I am constantly reflecting on how I can communicate the experience in a page or so of written English. Now, I just need to find a way to communicate these experiences more frequently...