{"id":3,"date":"2009-09-08T17:31:27","date_gmt":"2009-09-08T22:31:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/?p=3"},"modified":"2009-09-09T18:45:00","modified_gmt":"2009-09-09T23:45:00","slug":"how-to-juggle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/2009\/09\/08\/how-to-juggle\/","title":{"rendered":"How to Juggle"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>When I was twelve, I went into my backyard and taught myself how to juggle.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>It wasn&#8217;t something I&#8217;d thought about doing &#8212; I was bored and needed something to do. The only jugglers I remember seeing:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Steve Martin<\/li>\n<li>A clown at a third-rate circus<\/li>\n<li>A guy at a Renaissance festival<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><strong>I didn&#8217;t have the slightest idea how the juggling patterns worked.<\/strong> I tried and failed, repeated as necessary, and didn&#8217;t leave the backyard until figuring out the <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Cascade_(juggling)\">three ball cascade<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Curiosity and tenacity paid off.<\/p>\n<p>When I started writing, I let curiosity and tenacity also be my guide. I traded hours of juggling for hours of writing. I got better. <strong>And then I got busy.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>College came along. I worked odd jobs to pay for school. I didn&#8217;t see friends as much as I wanted. I met an artist; she became my wife. Schedules collided. <strong>Everybody I knew had become jugglers of a different kind.<\/strong> It became hard to find time to do all the things I wanted to do. <strong>Everything seemed so fast and out of control.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>When I taught myself to juggle five things, everything initially seemed so fast and out of control. <strong>Through hard work, it became easier.<\/strong> When it became effortless, I started adding tricks into the pattern. Then I moved on to six and seven things.<\/p>\n<p>I looked at my schedules like I looked at juggling. With each new step as a juggler, things seemed to speed up and fly out of control. But I knew if I relaxed and stuck with it, it would become second nature.<\/p>\n<p><strong>When I applied the lessons learned from juggling to my life, everything slowed down.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>As long as I relaxed and focused on the things that mattered, there was time to add more items and variations into life&#8217;s patterns. I found there was time for school, work, writing, friendships, my wife, and even juggling.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve taught myself a lot of things in my life, and one of the lessons I learned early on is that <strong>it&#8217;s easier to get better at something when you surround yourself with others doing the same thing.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I became a good juggler in my backyard, but I became a better juggler when I started juggling with others. I became a good writer through long hours of practice, but I became a better writer when I started talking with other writers and editors.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us are trying to juggle a dream, a job, and a life. <strong>Most of us feel like somebody has put too many things in our hands and said, &#8220;Juggle!&#8221;<\/strong> without any instructions on how to keep things in the air.<\/p>\n<p>I know it&#8217;s possible to juggle many things at once&#8211;I&#8217;ve been a juggler for 28 years.<\/p>\n<p><strong>My goal with The Juggling Writer blog is to prove that we&#8217;re all jugglers capable of doing more than we ever dreamed.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When I was twelve, I went into my backyard and taught myself how to juggle. It wasn&#8217;t something I&#8217;d thought about doing &#8212; I was bored and needed something to do. The only jugglers I remember seeing: Steve Martin A clown at a third-rate circus A guy at a Renaissance festival I didn&#8217;t have the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[6,5],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.christophergronlund.com\/blog\/tjw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}