All posts tagged: Balance

Becoming More Bendy (Or Why Balance is B.S.)

By Amy Barr

The author aims for a flexible life. (Photo: TueNight) Bendy people are not necessarily happier people. That was my yoga teacher’s pronouncement as she watched her students struggle with backbends and pigeon poses. I chuckled along with the rest of the class at the ridiculousness of that statement, but in truth, her words had real resonance. Even after years of practice, I am not particularly bendy. I sometimes glance sideways at my mat-mates, envious of those who can wrap themselves into pretzels or place their palms flat on the floor while standing with their knees perfectly straight. That will never be me. The good news is that flexibility is neither a virtue nor a talent, at least not in yoga class. But outside of the studio — in real life — I’m working like hell on getting a whole lot bendier. As I evolve, so does my definition of balance. It once meant finding that elusive spot where work and family life meshed, and I was able to successfully keep many juggling balls in the …

Four Women Share a Real “Day-in-the-Life”

By Margit Detweiler

If we really look at how we manage our various tasks every day , it’s probably not quite the pretty picture we’d like it to be. Our daily lives are a succession of triumphant wins , mini fails and emailing from the toilet. As our own Adrianna says, “more often like the ups and downs of a seesaw than a constant juggling act.” But that doesn’t mean we’re unbalanced. It just means we each have our own unique strategies for getting stuff done. To that end, four TueNighters jotted down a typical day, or summary of our typical wins and “fails” — in our own fashion, of course. Click the plus sign to read each person’s “day.” Adrianna BOO! Daughter standing next to my bed at 3 a.m. with wet pants and sad eyes. Time to clean up an “accident.” YAY! 7 a.m., secretly reading the NYTimes app in bed on my phone surrounded by sleeping, hot-breathed girls — they’ve climbed in and nearly squished me off the bed but this is my favorite time of day. BOO! We’re …

Movie Night: Four Even-Keeled Films and One Very Off-Kilter

By Piers Marchant

In which we explore the filmic concerns of a given theme, and find new and novel ways of putting together yet another Internet-based list of movies. The wrinkle here, is our fifth pick will actually serve to prove as the counter argument, the best representation of the direct opposite of our theme. 1. After Hours (1985) Director: Martin Scorsese Essential Characters: Paul (Griffin Dunne), Marcy (Rosanna Arquette), and a cast of thousands Gist: Poor nebbish Paul, a midtown working schlub, thinks he’s suddenly hit the jackpot when he meets the radiantly beautiful Marcy, an artist who lives downtown in SoHo. On uncharacteristically spontaneous impulse, he agrees to meet her in artsy, peculiar SoHo for a date he believes will change his outlook. Instead, he gets deeper and deeper embroiled in an ever-more ridiculous series of events and subsequent misunderstandings that leave more and more people chasing after him. Balancing Act (1-10): Perfect 10. *SPOILER ALERT* By the end of the night, with various different factions trying to hunt him down, Paul ends up, er, dropped …

Margit’s Note: Balance?!?

By Margit Detweiler

(Photo Credit: istock.com ) Work-Life balance? Ha. Magazines tell us we need to achieve it — that we need to streamline our to-do lists and apportion our “me-you-them”  time until we get the perfect, world-wide recognized system of yin and yang. Well guess what, not gonna happen. Ever. This week we’re sharing real stories of daily balancing acts, how we juggle and keep the plates spinning all at once. How they come crashing to the ground. How we get by. We’re also introducing a new/ old column. We’ve brought my old Tumblr, “What’s Your System“, into the TueNight family as a regular column.  What’s Your System is about real people’s tricks for getting stuff done; life hacks, if you will. We all have those little tweaks we do every day to make our lives easier, and sometimes they’re incredibly creative, and sometimes they’re incredibly strange. Over the next two weeks we’ll highlight some of our best posts (you can find the rest of the posts in our archives and for now still on Tumblr. Until …