19: Jolt of Joy – Keeping the Right Balls in the Air

Your House Doesn’t Have to Be a Bowling Ball

There’s a well-known quote, attributed to both John Maxwell and Nora Roberts in slightly different forms, about juggling life’s priorities like balls: work is rubber, it bounces back if dropped, but family, health, friends, and spirit are glass, and dropping those leaves real damage. It’s good advice as far as it goes, but it’s worth taking one step further.

There’s more than one kind of house ball

A tidy, organized home tends to get treated as one of those bouncy, rubber balls, not glass, but still something we feel compelled to keep in the air, because letting the house slide too far can ripple into stress that touches the glass balls too. Fair enough. But here’s the twist: the version of “organized home” being juggled matters enormously.

The perfectly staged, always-white, magazine-worthy homes scrolling past on Pinterest and Instagram aren’t a light rubber ball at all. For a brain that struggles with executive function, that version is more like an eighteen-pound bowling ball, heavy, exhausting, and nearly impossible to keep in rotation alongside everything else that actually matters more.

Permission to swap the bowling ball for something smaller

The fix isn’t dropping the house ball entirely, it’s choosing a smaller one. A ping-pong ball version of “organized enough” is still worth carrying, it’s just not the crushing standard borrowed from a perfectly curated feed. Doing just enough, right now, is a completely legitimate answer, and it frees up real energy for the priorities that are actually made of glass.

Perfection was never the priority

Say it plainly: perfection is not the priority. Letting that be true, out loud, to yourself, makes room to take small, sustainable steps instead of being paralyzed by an impossible standard. The house ball can grow a little heavier over time if that feels right, but it never has to become the sixteen-pound version again.

Until next time, continue to choose joy.