So I haven't posted in a while, and that's simply because I didn't know what I wanted this blog to be. I didn't know if I wanted to continue sharing some insight into my life or if I wanted to take a new direction on things and do something new. And I kind of want to do both with this post, mainly to update the blog, and mainly so that I can update everyone on my life since school and work seem to take up more of my time than I would like.
I'll give a really brief update, since life between now and the last update has changed significantly. My life got really turbulent this time last year. I had a lot of drama and things go on and that forced me to lose a lot of the friends that I thought had my back. On the bright side, that forced me to make new friends and rekindle some of the friendships that I had lost. New friends meant new opportunities, and I eventually made a friend and that friendship turned into a new relationship. There were plenty of speed bumps on that route, but I've all but put those speed bumps in my rear view mirror, and I'm trudging on.
But now, life is taking more turns than I thought possible. I'm in my senior year of college, and my graduation application was accepted so I'll be graduating in the Spring semester. Graduation is so close that I can smell it and it's glorious. But at the same time, it's weird conceptualizing the fact that I'm going to be a full time worker now, and that I won't have to be in school anymore. I'm testing out a position right now at work, that will be for a potential full time position, making sure that I'm a good fit for the job and that I'm going to do as well as my boss, the department I work for, and the department that I'm going to working under think I will do. I'm not going to lie, doing a full time job with part time hours is rough. Not physically but mentally and I've been learning lesson after lesson, and so the real purpose of this post is to talk about these lessons, if for nothing else than for future Alyssa to remember the lessons. The main lesson that I'm focusing on is taking care of yourself.
So school has been crazy. Like I mentioned, it's my senior year which means projects. All the projects forever. I'm in five classes, and I'm still working. I'm sure that anyone who has already learned the lesson that I keep eluding to has already figured out what said lesson is on, and that's feeling burned out.
I found that I was becoming less and less effective and productive, both at work and in school. When I was at work, I found that I was getting distracted and finding new ways to just burn time and avoid doing what I really should have been working on in the first place. I think my boss caught onto it too, and she tried to hint that to me in a roundabout sort of way. One night, as I was procrastinating all my time away on Facebook, I decided to do some research on feeling burnt out. I was astounded. So many people, so many CEO's even, had posts talking about their experiences on feeling burnt out. I thought that I was invincible, that I could avoid feeling burnt out by just forcing my brain to work. I couldn't fathom the idea that feeling burnt out was as common as it was, so I decided to talk to one of the biggest role models in my life, my boss.
My boss is the type of person that takes on all the tasks that everyone seems to loathe, and thus, avoid. She doesn't really ever complain about the tasks that she hates, even though nearly everyone else (myself included) does. If I'm honest, she even has a way of motivating you to like doing the task that you don't want to do. Needless to say, I kind of idolize her for her ability to just sit down and get all those awful tasks done. So I really valued her input. And you know what she told me? That even she gets burnt out. And with this knowledge I knew that no one was immune to this thing. That everyone needed breaks. I told her how I was feeling and some of the things that I was experiencing and she told me that she often starts to feel the same.
So what have I learned? That breaks and leave are necessary. Completely necessary. They are necessary for you to just stay sane. At the recommendation of my boss, I'm taking a little mental vacay tomorrow and I'm excited to try it out. I'm excited about the fact that I have the opportunity to binge watch Netflix, play some new games, and read my book that I've been working on reading all semester. The next lesson that I have to learn is that I need to take time for me and take care of myself, and part of that means leaving work at work and outside stressors, outside. I need to focus on escaping from the world when I'm home, and tackling the world when I'm out in it. I'm anxious about not doing any school work, or even work at my job. I fear that I'm going to get behind, but every time I think that, I just remind myself that it is necessary, and that I do need this. At least, I need it if I want to be productive and effective.
