Before You Work Yourself to Death

I suck at it. Time management is not my forte in the slightest. In fact, I wrote this blog the same day it was due because I had no time to work on it. Unlike some, my problem is not that I never get anything done or am always procrastinating—which believe me I still do A LOT—it's that I work so much that I make no time for literally anything else.

Part of my problem is that I spend every single day thinking that I do nothing at all, and so I need to make up for it by working more. My rude awakening came from not one, not two, not even three, but five of my friends being very surprised that I was spending my Friday afternoon relaxing instead of working on schoolwork or studying.

That moment was eye-opening to the work-life balance I just do NOT have. I work a job in the morning, start class at 11 every day, go to class until 4, then meet with a study group almost every day for a wide range of projects, assignments, or just loose studying, and somehow still don't make enough time to study. I haven't even been able to attend a single meeting for my only club, because I am constantly so busy that I just can't fit in. I tell my friends that I don't have time for things like sitting down to eat dinner or participating in my LLC events. I feel guilt for not working in the one break my schedule offers me three days a week. I have no time to work out, watch TV, read, or generally just breathe, and I feel like that experience is shared by way too many people.

So many of us are constantly feeling bad for the small breaks we take or for the little things we allow ourselves to enjoy. So many of us are on the go go go go for months at a time that we only stop to breathe when we've literally driven ourselves to break down. Let's be honest, from a man that has won the plaque of chronic over-worker: stop.

I know it's hard, and I know that it feels like you literally can't, and I know that some people scoff at the breaks (It's me; I scoff at the breaks) but please, most of us live in an economy that will have us working every day for the next 70 years, so that test tomorrow? Study for it, because you'll feel worse if you fail, but then go eat dinner and god damn it buy yourself some Freshens or something. Call it quits after a couple hours and enjoy being in the prime of life. Don't hate yourself for taking time out of your day to breathe.