If you squeeze your butt cheeks you don't fall over as easily

When I decided that my word for 2008 would be Balance, I didn't imagine I would spend this morning standing on one foot in a crane position with the phone server's patch panel perched on my thigh so I could re-affix it to the server rack wall. Thankfully the patch panel is still working for the moment, but it's only a temporary fix. Speaking of work, I started making a change last month (hehe, last year) that has significantly improved my mood. I started using a personal e-mail account. Previously, I had a Gmail account, but used it for very few things. I hesitated to move things over to it and "mess it up" with SPAM or things I won't read. But then my work account was a conflicting mixture of work "when can we have this tedious technical thing done?!?!" requests and "So-and-So has added you as a friend" announcements. I love me some blog comments just as much as the next gal, so I would check my e-mail all the time seeing if there were updates and be annoyed that on a Monday night I was stressing out about some random work email someone on the west coast had sent me at 7pm. I would also ignore most to all of my personal emails because they came to my work account during the day when I didn't have time to reply to them and I hated logging on to read them again and get caught up in a work email instead.

So I started moving things over to the Gmail account. My Flickr and LiveJournal announcements go to Gmail. My Amazon shipping announcements go to Gmail. My SCA mailing lists go to Yahoo (except for the Merry Rose list, because I really should just remove myself from it and avoid all the gnashing of teeth in general). And this one small gesture has been fantastic. I can look at my In Box at work and more easily see what I need to reply to and when (with some help from the Lifehacker book to reorganize my e-mail folders and purge a bunch of crap I just don't need anymore). And I know that when I read my Gmail account it's only going to be "fun" emails and no "bleh" emails. Communicating with my friends has become fun again and not a chore!

It helps that I can easily read both my work and home accounts on the iPhone and reply to them from there without losing anything. With the addition of IMAP support for Gmail I can even sort emails into particular folders for both accounts from the phone.

It also helps me keep my personas straight in my head. At work I still go by my birth last name, but for personal matters I use my shiny new married name. It's been interesting to see how much of my week is spent being Genie "Punky" and how much of it is spent being Genie "Surname". Given that I was off most of the time between Christmas and New Years, I had my first opportunity to live entire days as my Surname name. This whole naming process, while confusing for everyone else, has been a perfect ritual for me. When I come home from work, much like Mr. Rogers, I take off my Punky name and hang it by the front door and put on my Surname slippers and cardigan to wear around the house. Both of us are still Genie and I have no strong preference for either last name since they are all parts of me, but it's been a much more fulfilling process than magically going by a new name as soon as Rich and I have cut the cake at our reception.

In many small ways I've been working on balance in my life. And it's getting easier every day, just like building muscle memory for standing on one leg.