‘A Fine Balance – The Podcast’: Season 2, Episode 5 Out Now
The recording process for this episode of ‘A Fine Balance – The Podcast’ was plagued with quite a few mishaps. Thankfully, my guest Laura Krantz, who is a mother of five, and has spent most of her career working in the most challenging of secondary school environments, is adept at managing mishaps.
In fact, she describes running her life as “organised chaos”, so we sailed through our podcasting technical hiccups without much fanfare. The final product, I’m pleased to say, is the recording of a heartfelt and honest interview, which covers some very topical and emotive subjects.
In this episode, Laura shares the story of her decision to leave the teaching profession in order to regain some balance in her life. She describes the difficulties she encountered in finding balance as a teacher, and how the mounting workload, and the pressure – both in and outside of work – pushed her to a breaking point.
And she touches on some of the tools that she applied to recognise and recover from burning out.
Laura also talks in this episode about her experience of falling pregnant in her teens, and her pursuit of balance back then when, contrary to most of her student peers, she was juggling school life with the responsibilities of motherhood.
Having been on the receiving end of a lot of criticism, Laura also talks about the impact that this has had, and continues to have, on her work-life balance choices – something I wrote about in the blog post: Treat ’em Mean, Keep ’em Keen.
As you can probably tell from this short run-through of the content of ‘A Fine Balance – The Podcast’ Season 2, Episode 5, my guest packs a lot in to her time. Did I mention that since leaving teaching, she has changed careers to become a project manager for an engineering consultancy? And that she has a home-baking business on side too? And there are those five children I definitely mentioned…
It’s no wonder, therefore, that Laura describes herself as “the busiest person I know”. Which leads me to this loaded question:
How do you find balance when you’re busy?
Laura doesn’t come with all the answers. As listeners of this podcast may identify with, she is still in the thick of it, so to speak, and pursuing her balance as she goes, one day at a time, depending on whatever challenge life throws her way.
Of her balance, Laura says it’s something she’s been searching for for a long time.
“My mum always tells me I’m biting off a bit more than I can chew”, she told me. And she went on to say that for her, finding balance means finding inner contentment on both sides of the work:life ratio.
Now in her new career, that sense of balance is again in reach and though her work load and life load are more sustainable now, as a full-time employee and mother of five, she is continually in pursuit of that ‘fine balance’.