Sometimes I think my life can seem a lot more exciting here than it actually is in real life – between work, school, writing this blog, and trying to get some sleep, there’s not always a lot of time left over.  There’s always more work that I could be doing – getting ahead in classes, writing more posts ahead of time for the blog – but I was really starting to get burnt out and exhausted. It can get really stressful when you don’t leave yourself any time to take a break. I have this issue a lot, and it’s something I’m trying to get better at. I’m good at saying no if it’s not something that I’m really interested in, but I’m really bad at saying no when it’s something that I really want to do but might not actually have enough time for.

When I was an undergraduate, it was basically a badge of honor to talk about how busy you were. We would all brag about how many units we were taking (my college’s version of credits), how many activities we were involved in, and, by default, how little sleep we got. This is a really, really unhealthy way to live – when I would come home for breaks for school, I would sleep 12 hours a night for days in a row, trying to catch up on sleep! Clearly, living that way is not sustainable, and not something that I want to continue into my adult life.

I’m really excited to be involved in things that I’m passionate about, but these things still take up time, which isn’t something that I have a lot of to spare. And when you’re burnt out, it just makes everything seem worse – writing posts takes me longer because there’s nothing that I’m excited about, I can’t find motivation to work on my homework.

So this weekend, I tried to find some sort of balance. I decided to set aside Saturday as a work-free day. This meant doing some homework on Friday night (definitely not my favorite thing to do), but it was worth it to have a day spent without trying to squeeze in any work!

So Saturday, I went to a family friend’s bridal shower and celebrated my mom’s birthday with dinner at Senti (which I’ve talked about before here and here – it’s one of my favorite Pittsburgh restaurants!). It wasn’t a day spent relaxing doing nothing, but it was revitalizing in a different way – it was great to have fun and enjoy without trying to figure out where I could fit in a few minutes of work.

Sometimes balance isn’t about being completely efficient and trying to fit in every minute with something to do, but instead, it’s about figuring out when you need to take a break! I feel much more ready to face the coming week now.