The Perfectionist's Guide to Losing Control

The second promise is that all your most basic and complex needs, longings, desires—all those lush, rolling, verdant, dewdrop-dotted hills of wanderlust inside you, all your curiosities big and small—could be met in the first place, and that they could be met simultaneously, and still, that they could all be met simultaneously while you’re also rea

We buy into the admittedly alluring goal of balance because we believe two false promises. The first promise is that life is generally static.

My response is less “Don’t worry, we all struggle to figure it out,” and more “Don’t worry, balance doesn’t exist.”

I don’t know one balanced woman. I know a lot of women who are two extra days in a week away from feeling balanced, or one professional housecleaning service away from feeling balanced, or one generous extension on the deadline away from feeling balanced, or three entire days of their children in someone else’s loving and competent care away from f

Adhering to prescriptive balance is like that, except instead of holding on to a tiny Eames chair, you’re holding on to a tiny life, one you’re too big for, one that can’t possibly fit the magnitude of who you are.

trading the self-defined life for prescriptive balance.

Rupa was riding the extremely thin line between laughing at the ridiculousness of it all and having a full-on breakdown.

She was dating and traveling and going to the dentist every six months and buying books from independent booksellers and giving herself permission to do nothing.

She not only had friends, she regularly spent time with them.