I have a theory about life.
It involves a table.
Not a beautiful designer table. Not one of those perfectly styled tables you see in magazines, where everything is symmetrical and nobody appears to have children, deadlines or an overflowing laundry basket.
Mine is closer to the table you find in a busy restaurant. It has four legs:
Heart. Home. Health. Hustle.
↳ I worked really hard to alliterate this!
And, if I am honest, at least one of those legs is usually being propped up by a sachet of sugar.
Sometimes two sachets. Occasionally a brick.
I am slowly coming to terms with something I wish I had understood earlier: I cannot give every part of my life the attention it deserves at the same time.
I am not sure I ever will.
My Table Theory
Years ago, I started thinking about happiness as a table supported by four legs. Heart held spirituality, faith and hope. Home held family, friends and community. Health included my physical, mental and financial wellbeing. Hustle was work, earning and the part of me that likes to build things.
The theory made perfect sense to me. If all four legs were strong, the table would be stable. If one weakened, the whole thing would wobble.
For a long time, I treated that as something I was supposed to master. If I could become organised enough, disciplined enough and emotionally intelligent enough, I would eventually keep all four legs perfectly balanced.
I would exercise, sleep enough, be present with my family, do meaningful work, see my friends, look after my finances, make time for faith and presumably drink enough water while doing all of it.
I am still waiting for that week.
The table is rarely level
What I am beginning to understand is that life keeps moving, and the weight moves with it.
There are seasons when Hustle gets a disproportionate amount of me. Something important is happening at work. I am travelling. A team needs me. An idea has momentum, or there is a difficult problem I genuinely want to solve.
Sometimes I lean into it because I have to. Sometimes because I want to. I love my work, and that matters.
But while I am pouring energy into Hustle, I can feel another leg beginning to wobble. Maybe I have not exercised. Maybe I have not called someone I love. Maybe I am physically present at home but mentally still in a meeting. Maybe I have not created enough quiet to hear myself think.
Sometimes I know all of that and still do not have the capacity to fix it.
That is the part I am trying to become more honest about.
Sometimes all I have is a sachet of sugar
When a restaurant table keeps rocking, someone eventually folds a napkin or pushes a sugar sachet underneath the short leg.
Nobody pretends the table has been repaired. It is simply stable enough for now.
Some days Health gets a sachet: a walk instead of the perfect exercise routine, an early night, a doctor's appointment I have been postponing, ten quiet minutes.
Sometimes Home gets it: a phone call from an airport, a voice note, one protected evening, putting my phone down even though my brain is still racing.
Sometimes Heart gets a moment of prayer or a little silence.
And sometimes Hustle gets the sachet too. Work cannot always have the best of me. Occasionally, it gets what I can give.
That has been surprisingly difficult for me to accept.
When a sachet is not enough
There are also seasons when the wobble is bigger. A sachet is not going to do it. I need something more deliberate: leave, a boundary, help, a cancelled commitment or an uncomfortable conversation.
I have had moments when I was tired in a way that sleep alone was not going to solve. Moments when I had to ask whether the pace I was maintaining was changing me into someone I did not particularly want to become.
I wish I could say I always notice early. I do not.
Sometimes I keep going long after the table has started wobbling. Sometimes the people around me notice before I do. Sometimes I convince myself that because I can carry something, I therefore should.
I am still learning the difference.
Motherhood made the wobble impossible to ignore
Motherhood is where Table Theory became less of an idea and more of a lived reality for me.
I love being a mother. I also love my career. I am increasingly unwilling to pretend that those two things fit together neatly.
I travel for work. I become absorbed in ideas and problems. I enjoy being in rooms where difficult things are being debated and something new might emerge.
And then I pack a suitcase.
Suddenly Hustle and Home are standing right next to each other, and both matter.
When I leave, I can feel guilty. When I stay, I can sometimes feel guilty. When I am working, I wonder whether my children are getting enough of me. When I am with them, part of my brain is occasionally still somewhere at work.
The guilt has an extraordinary ability to travel in both directions.
I used to think that meant I was doing something wrong. I am starting to wonder whether it sometimes means I care deeply about more than one thing.
That does not make the tension disappear. It only changes how I interpret it.
I have studied people, organisations, leadership and change. None of it prepared me for walking through the front door after giving everything I had at work and discovering that the people I love need another version of me.
Noticing the wobble
I no longer think a wobbling table automatically means something has gone wrong. Sometimes it means life is happening.
What worries me is when I stop noticing. When a temporary compromise quietly becomes a permanent one. When the sugar sachet has been under Health for years. When I keep telling myself I will reconnect with someone when things calm down. When Home receives whatever energy is left.
The question I am trying to ask is not whether my life is balanced. It is which leg is wobbling, and what it needs from me right now.
Sometimes the answer is attention. Sometimes it is help. Sometimes it is a sachet of sugar. Sometimes it is a brick. Occasionally, I need to take everything off the table for a while.
I do not have this sorted
When I first imagined Table Theory, I was trying to describe what balance looked like. Now I think I am trying to understand what living honestly with imbalance looks like.
I have seasons, trade-offs, guilt and ambition. I have people I love and work that matters deeply to me. I have days when I know exactly what needs my attention and others when I genuinely do not know which wobble to deal with first.
Sometimes I stabilise things beautifully. Sometimes I leave the sugar sachet there far longer than I should. Sometimes I need a brick and keep pretending I do not.
And sometimes, despite all my theories, frameworks and experience, the whole bloody table wobbles.
I am trying to be okay with that too.