By NICOLE CARTRETTE
Staff Writer

I’m wobbly but mostly balanced.

At least that’s what one of those five-question surveys online says about me.

I share the diagnosis with about 40,000 people who too were drawn to the question: “How is your work life balance?”

And for those of you who didn’t take the survey, “wobbly and mostly balanced” means I’m in the middle.

I am straddling the fence. Sheer chaos or “out of balance” is on one side. The Holy Grail, “harmony,” is on the other.

I’m not alone. If my husband came home at five it would mean his office burned down. And even if he did come home early I wouldn’t be there to see it.

From time to time I can’t seem to stay away from my work either and it is guilty of not staying away from me.

It’s the person I told to call me at home. The notes scratched on the back of an envelope while on vacation.

The meeting that lasted longer than my little girl could stay awake.

That’s the wobble, I guess.

The balance on the other hand comes from understanding my cell phone is not a vital organ and that I can live without it, that a day in the sand is worth a day off, and knowing there are multiple variations of “If You’re Happy and You Know It” that can be performed while driving.

I can stay on the fence all the while it’s becoming the American way – if you work, work a lot.

It seems there is a new survey everyday about how much time we spend at work.

The United Nations even has created a handy-dandy little study that shows we are more productive than our European counterparts. Of course, that study basically consisted of taking the gross domestic product for each country and dividing it by the number of workers.

Then there is another study that says something like 30 percent of college graduates work more than 50 hours a week.

No one really frowns upon work, though, and I think I can handle being in the middle.

What I do frown upon though is shoving an all work and no play attitude on to our children.

Call me silly but it broke my heart to hear there is no such thing as recess anymore. I’m not talking about some school on the other side of the world. I’m talking about schools all over the country and right here in Columbus County.

Apparently, organized P.E. has replaced recess. I don’t know exactly what that is but it doesn’t sound like much fun.

I guess my little girl won’t get the liberty of choosing the swings over the monkey bars on school time. Heaven forbid she learn to socialize with other children on her own during a period of time in which there is not someone to tell her what to do.

But for now at least I do get to enjoy watching her little toddler-world full of play that knows nothing about work. I can escape there with her, too.

I can also hope – hope she will one day find harmony or at the very least have a “wobbly but mostly balanced” life.