“You say: where are we going? I guess there’s just no way of knowing.” – Moray McLaren
It’s easy to forget yourself when you have a specific timeline or schedule to follow, and I am struggling to balance that schedule for the inclusion of “me time.” I spend so much of the week jumping through burning hoops that by the time the weekend gets here, I am practically comatose and unwilling to socialize.
I don’t want to do anything. I don’t want to see anyone. Hell, I’m lucky if I find the drive to catch up on the homework that I couldn’t do during the week.
If you want an example of my recent introverted behavior, I spent Sunday sitting on my computer playing Roller Coaster Tycoon. This may not seem introverted, but for me – who likes to go out and be involved in the community – it is.
I could give myself a break and say that I hid at home on Sunday because I spent the previous day using all of my available energy to visit with members of my chapter at our DAR meeting, but I don’t know if that’s 100% accurate.
I’m just tired – and I don’t have enough time to take care of me.
I told myself that Sundays would be my day – the day that I put aside for me – but I keep filling it up with things. Something like playing video games is a good “me time” activity – but I can’t seem to stop thinking. I sat there with that game and focused on how the game ran: programming, display, gameplay. I was more interested on figuring out how the game was set up than in relaxing – though, I spent hours beating each park, so I must have been at least slightly entertained, but I didn’t relax.
I found some very helpful advice online on How You Can Learn to Finally, Really Relax, thanks to Melanie Pinola, of which the strongest suggestion I found was to stop trying to be perfect, stop trying to do it all. I don’t know why that’s such a hard concept for me to grasp, but it is. There’s so little time, and life is so short, that I struggle to understand why I should stop – I just have so much I need to do.
And I think that’s my problem, I’m doing things that I need to do, not necessarily what I want to do.
I keep telling myself that it’s just for a little while – a couple more years and I can slow down because I will have my master’s degree. However, I can almost guarantee that I am lying to myself.
So, how do we slow down to be more effective? Is it a change of the mind – or a change of the World?
Kiminy Cricket 
“A” type personalities don’t fare well if they can’t find a down mode… Kimberly, where/when/how do you exhale and smell the flowers – ocean – trees – waterfall??? Running doesn’t work, gym doesn’t work – perhaps you need to consider taking another class??? Something yoga or tai-chi — redirect your brain to look in and find yourself before you can’t teach yourself to breath deeply and take yourself to a “happy thought” I love you!!!
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