Man, I hit the wall hard on this one. It wasn’t some spiritual or deep financial crisis—it was just two simple things that both needed me 100%. Like when you see that 2 of Pentacles card. You’ve got to keep them moving, but you just want to put one down and breathe. I felt that chaos in my bones for a solid six months.
My two pentacles? One was the anchor: a high-stress, high-paying corporate gig that was basically a beast demanding twelve hours a day, sometimes more. It paid the mortgage and kept the lights on, so it wasn’t negotiable. The other was the dream: this blog, this whole side thing I started because I felt like I was losing my damn mind just pushing paper for The Man. I knew I had to build my own exit ramp, but that ramp also required time and energy I just didn’t have left.
The Initial Disaster: Trying to Cheat Time
I started by trying to just tack the second thing onto the end of the first thing. You know how it goes. Finish the corporate emails at 7 PM, grab a quick, sad meal, and then sit down at 8 PM, all hyped up, saying, “Okay, now for the blog!”
- I’d stare at the screen, totally wiped out.
- I’d write five messy paragraphs and hate them all.
- I’d panic about the work I knew I had to do tomorrow.
- I’d bail out by 9 PM and watch some terrible TV just to shut my brain up.
This went on for weeks. I was miserable, and frankly, I was starting to mess up both sides. I was showing up late to work because I stayed up too late stressing about the blog. I was writing crap on the blog because all my good brain power was spent on corporate presentations. I was the definition of falling apart while trying to look like I was holding everything together.
The Shift: Stop Lying About Balance
One Tuesday morning, I just stopped. I sat in my car, late for a stupid meeting, and decided the whole “juggle” thing was the wrong picture. I wasn’t a circus performer. I needed a strategy, not just better grip.
I realized the biggest lie I was telling myself was that I could give both things 50% and succeed. That’s not juggling; that’s trying to hold two full glasses of water still without spilling. That’s impossible. Juggling is all about letting one thing drop a little so you can push the other one higher. It’s about motion, not stillness.
I had to decide which was the priority right now. The corporate gig was Priority 1. It had to be. It was paying for the freedom I was trying to build with Priority 2. Once I accepted that, the rules changed.
My Four Rules for Keeping the Pentacles Moving
I started hacking my schedule based on my energy, not the clock. This was the practice log I wrote down, the stuff I actually did:
1. The Morning Momentum Grab:
I stopped looking at my corporate email until 9:00 AM sharp. My actual workday started then. From 6:00 AM to 8:30 AM, that was strictly for the side gig. I didn’t use that time for deep research; I used it for creation. My brain is the freshest then. I used to hate mornings, but I forced myself. I drank coffee and told myself, “Do the hard thing first.”
2. The Corporate 80% Rule:
I stopped trying to be the best damn employee. I aimed for 80%. Perfectly competent, meeting deadlines, not letting anyone down, but I stopped volunteering for the extra, non-essential crap that only served my boss’s ego. I started saying “No” to the time-sucks. The difference between 80% and 100% effort at work bought me an extra two hours a week for the blog. Seriously. It was glorious.
3. The Small-Win Log:
Instead of saying, “I have to write a new post,” I broke it down to the tiniest movement. On any given day, if I was too tired for deep writing, the goal was one thing:
- Outline the next article.
- Find five images.
- Fix three messy sentences in a draft.
The key was keeping the habit alive, even if the progress was microscopic. Momentum beats perfection every single time.
4. The Friday Night Cut-Off:
I used to check work emails all weekend. I killed that. Friday night, at 6 PM, I slammed the laptop shut on the corporate stuff and didn’t open it again until Monday morning. That two-day mental break, knowing the corporate pentacle was safely put down, allowed me to give the side gig pentacle a solid boost on Saturday morning without the anxiety monster leaning over my shoulder.
It sounds simple, but it only worked once I accepted that the two things wouldn’t be equal. They had to take turns leading. Today, the blog is its own monster, and I’m much closer to kicking that corporate gig to the curb. But I wouldn’t be here if I hadn’t figured out how to rotate those damn pentacles.
