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Last Word: Plate Spinning Is Not So Bad
I love the moniker for this magazine: Atlanta Woman - Bold. Balanced. Business. Okay, so two out of three isn't bad.
by Nancy Zintak
March 1, 2007
Some of us may be bold and brimming with business savvy, but who in this world is balanced
anyway? Right now there are 75 press releases waiting to go out from my new media and marketing
company. There are 14 loads of darks, lights and colored waiting to be “Shouted out,” pre-soaked
and verily cursed, there are the insurmountable book bags, soccer bags, gym bags, tennis bags,
raincoats, Tupperware, lunch boxes, sweatshirts, cleats, now so-over-due-Blockbuster-DVD's-we-own
'em, all waiting for this unbalanced, yet bold businesswoman to attend!
There are lots of us out here, Atlanta has always been the place to come if you're from somewhere else and you don't want to go to New York (too big) Chicago (too cold) or Charlotte (too Atlanta-wannabe!)
Atlanta is a good place to test your metal as you navigate through the many incarnations in the life of a striving-for-balance working mother – it may sound simplistic, but people are nice here. My sister-in-law visited from Pennsylvania and came home dumbfounded: even the people in drive-through, fast-food lines are nice! It makes that quest for balance a little easier.
Many of us have tried it all – in my 10 years in radio I went from part-time, to fulltime; back to part-time after baby N¯1, then back to fulltime through babies N¯2, N¯3 and N¯4, then contract, then baby N¯5, then what happens to many of us – temporarily “retired,” yet working fulltime for our children's schools, our churches and our communities.
Now, I'm back to freelancing, and I look something akin to that old 60s TV commercial of the mom slinging a frying pan around with an old-fashioned apron protecting her Joseph A. Banks man-suit, while singing gleefully, “I can bring home the bacon and cook it up in a pan!”– RIGHT! How about all my money goes to daycare and do you want Wendy's or Moe's????
Plate-spinning is not so bad … yesterday I drove by Sydney Marcus park and there were busy moms in sling backs on their blackberry's while pushing their kids on a swing – is that so bad? It could be slightly better than those blurry pictures of our mothers sporting cocktails and cigarettes back in the “olden days” after school – but that was all before club soccer, Robotics clubs and debate teams.
At least moms today try to do some if not all … it's a frenetic existence and perhaps the biggest threat to finding balance is the time we spend in the car. I can be on the cusp of “doing it all” one day and hit the sea of red break lights that starts the domino effect of late to soccer, late to tutorial, late to choir, dinner dried out, home too late to finish science project (the one you inevitably forgot to buy the three-panneled poster for anyway…).
Sometimes living and driving in Atlanta makes me yearn for the cars the Jetson's drove in the old cartoon of my youth. But complaining about traffic in Atlanta is so passé – it's like complaining about the humidity in August: These things are non-negotiable. For an easier commute would you give up the dogwoods, the 65-degree days in January and Krispy Kreme donuts? I don't think so.
So go for it, try and find balance in this upside down and busy city. It's not going to happen, so pull over – it's spring! Go the park and leave your Blackberry in the glove compartment. Just this once.
