I found out tonight that an assignment I thought was due in two weeks is actually due in one.

I feel like a real uni student now.

Fortunately, I’ve been plugging away steadily at this assignment, so finishing it will be more dignified trot than panicked sprint.

A sensible student would probably be spending these spare minutes I have now working on the assignment rather than blogging. But I wanted to reflect on why I messed up the due dates, and how I can improve on that in the future.

The first question is easy: I’m juggling a lot of balls at the moment, and I took my eye off one of them.

The second question is harder. I made a calendar for uni. I just hadn’t checked it recently. I’d literally been too busy working on assignments to refresh my memory of when they were due.

The easy answer here is maybe I need to put a reminder in my phone every Sunday night to check my calendars and plan my work for the next few weeks. That’s not overly burdensome.

I’ll try it and see.

One of the goals I’ve set myself for the year is balance work, study, health, relationships and creativity. And as I explained to my psychologist, that’s not a static balance like rock balancing. It’s an active process like surfing. The situation is fluid. You need to focus on your destination, while being flexible about how you get there.

And that’s where I ran out of surfing metaphors because I am a nerd.

Actually, I suspect that balancing all those aspects of my life is going to be less like surfing and more like spreadsheeting. I just need to schedule at least some time for everything, and accept that it will never quite be enough.

We chip away at things, one step at at a time, and eventually the mountain is climbed.