I cannot juggle. Not that I’ve seriously tried to learn, but I’ve watched a friend’s brother, a couple of individuals at a show at Great America and a few other “professionals,” and I’ve tried tossing a couple of tennis balls around with no success.

I may not be able to toss around clubs or rings of fire, but I can perform a juggling act of another kind — juggling time.

I can juggle all of my daily tasks, homework, activities and time with friends with the best of ’em. Everything I do is important to me, and I want to do my best, so I juggle multiple tasks at once.

College is not just all about classes and homework, but I can’t commit my time to only one outside group, too, so I’m constantly splitting up my time among different groups.

Since friendships are one of the most important things to me, I’m also not about to let my time be completely consumed with all of my responsibilities, especially seeing this is my last semester as a college student.

I work best under pressure, and when I get really busy, I begin to run on adrenaline. I’m an individual who needs lots of sleep, but I surprised myself at how well I still functioned the past couple of weeks with getting only 4 1/2 or six hours of sleep most nights.

Sometimes I’ll forget I agreed to go to that luncheon for Student Publications or that I told a friend we should be able to hang out on a night I end up staying later than expected at work. Still, most of the time, I think I handle everything pretty well.

However, along the way of juggling all of the things I “have to do,” I don’t leave time for “nothing.”

I realized last week the emphasis society puts on elements of our time people call doing “nothing.” Unless someone is being productive or going out somewhere, it’s likely they will, or someone else will, classify what they are doing as “nothing.” Is there a way to really do nothing? Just sitting is in fact doing something. And sometimes doing “nothing” is important.

One of the biggest juggling acts in life is juggling time, but it’s not always easy to keep in balance. People also have to learn to juggle being busy with not being busy.

I justified watching two hours of TV once as doing homework. I want to be a writer, and maybe one day I’ll want to write for TV. Just like you have to read to write books, I decided you have to watch TV to write for TV. Really, I just needed some kind of down time, and I’m so use to doing everything with a purpose, I had to create one just to relax.

I’m not saying everyone should watch TV or play video games for three hours a day every day. For me at least, that concept is a waste of time. I would much rather be extremely busy than extremely bored, which I’m sure would happen if I allowed myself to do too much of “nothing.”

At the same time, we can’t be constantly busy. We need to breathe and take a time out.

This concept is not new, but it might be one people need a reminder about.

We all have daily tasks like “go[ing] to the bank and the hardware store,” as Toby Keith sings about in his song “My List.”

He sings, “I cross ’em off as I get ’em done, but when the sun is set, there’s still more than a few things left I haven’t got to yet. Go for a walk, say a little prayer, take a deep breath of mountain air, put on my gloves and play some catch; it’s time that I make time for that […] start living, that’s the next thing on my list.”

We all need to concentrate on the “important things,” which includes, among doing homework, striving for a job, being an active member of a campus organization and friends, doing “nothing,” a healthy balance of juggling both being busy and not being busy.