Sink, swim, float?

Happy Sunday amigos! I hope you have all survived another chilly week and are currently enjoying as peaceful a weekend as I am.

I’ve found myself feeling quite reflective this week. It’s been a bit of a stressful one with work and uni and it’s made me think about my work/life balance.

More and more recently I’ve been inundated with Instagram posts about ‘living my best life’ and the power of positivity which is great because we all need the occasional reminder to not get bogged down with the mundane 9-5 lifestyle. But it’s also made me realise that this constant stream of positive thinking can actually be a bit intimidating. Always looking for the bright side is all well and good until you have a really shit day and not being able to magically cheer yourself up in ten seconds makes you feel like a bit of a failure.

Sometimes life feels like a bit of a competition, especially when reminders to follow your dreams, take chances and be spontaneous are everywhere when you can barely find the time to go to the pub after work. It’s easy to feel like you’re the only one sinking under the pressure of adulting while everyone else is swimming along just fine (shout out to my fellow panicked post-grads).

Not every week needs to feel like a complete success for it to have worth. Yesterday I tried to go for a rousing autumnal walk and ended up caught in torrential rain because I live in England, not California as I was clearly thinking. I got soaked and freezing all before I’d made it to the library and it could have been a disastrous start to the day.

But it wasn’t.

Oxford is beautiful in Autumn and despite the huge puddles and piles of mud I still got myself outside for the day which makes all the difference when I’m feeling stir crazy and panicked about my mounting workload.

This week I’ve been late for work twice, realised I’ve got no clean socks because I’ve forgotten to put a wash on and run out of time to finish my book for class. All these things are very minor but when you combine them with a few days of drizzly weather, not enough sleep and finding only an old carrot and a tub of yoghurt in the fridge for dinner, it’s pretty easy to get down on yourself.

Today I mixed it up and found a new cafe to test out instead of locking myself up in the library to pore over Hamlet. I still got just as much reading done and I’ve ended the day feeling much more relaxed (the artificial lighting of the Brookes’ library is nobody’s friend). The Magic Cafe is quiet, full of local art and has damn good coffee so really, I have no regrets at all- despite not setting foot on campus all day. Yes, it’s the weekend but uni doesn’t always stop, so finding places that I can work in but also enjoy is pretty special. They feel like little halfway- houses that let me avoid the stress of feeling like I’m not working enough but also not missing out on spontaneous life stuff.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that if you’ve come to the end of the week feeling like you’ve not managed to do everything you set out to on Monday, don’t panic. Granted, we all have responsibilities, but if I get to 75 and look back, I don’t want to think I spent more time stressing about what I hadn’t done than actually doing stuff that makes me happy.

What’s the moral of today’s story- don’t sweat the small stuff? Maybe, but sometimes that’s easier said than done and I worry about every miniscule thing so that would be a little hypocritical. I think it’s more a reminder that sometimes it’s okay to have a week where you’ve just floated along. You haven’t surged ahead and achieved more than you wanted to, but you also haven’t felt like you’re being squashed flat under a mountain of worry. Achieve what you can in your work/uni life but try to take time for yourself too. You can’t always fit everything and everyone in but as long as you’re trying your best, who cares?

It’s Monday tomorrow and we all get to try again so leave the left-over stresses of last week behind and plan to do something just for yourself- we are all important! I personally shall be swapping salad for cake at some point and I plan on having absolutely no regrets about it. Maybe if we all delight in the little things the big things will take care of themselves (she said hopefully).

I hope you all have fab roast dinners and manage to get into your dressing gowns at least an hour early- the new series of Atypical has just come out on Netflix and I defy you to find something better to do with your evening.