Exhaustion is something that none of us are unfamiliar with. The fifth-week tiredness has kicked in: most of us are suffering from some kind of stress-cold, annoyance or overwhelming workload. For me, it’s brain fog.
Working a lot, trying my hardest to stay on top of homework and trying hard this semester to be a more social being is beginning to catch up to me.
Let’s just put it this way: I’ve already used $50 of my Eagle Bucks at the Hiccup. I’m pretty sure if everyone stopped going there, I could keep them in business by myself. And so, despite constantly feeling like I could use either another Celsius or another latte, last week I pushed myself until I cried of exhaustion in the Bistro. What brought this minute-long cry on, you ask? They took about 15 minutes to make my sandwich. And because of this, I was late for a meeting.
I understand how dramatic that is. I was so tired, okay? So tired that a sandwich taking too long was detrimental to my well-being for about 10 minutes. And once I got to this meeting that I was a half hour late for, I contributed absolutely nothing of substance. This was on a Wednesday at 6 pm.
By Wednesday I had already pushed myself too hard. By Wednesday I had already told myself that I can take on “just one more task” before that “one” task turned into four and now I didn’t have time to wait for my dinner to be made or sit down for a minute and just take a breath.
So on Thursday I slept all day and by Friday I was ready to push myself again!
Being exhausted is something we all need to be taking more seriously. Taking time to allow ourselves to relax and do nothing for an hour or two everyday is so much more important than we realize most days.
Those of us with smaller social batteries may need even more time. I was with a friend all day on Saturday. By Sunday all my brain could even comprehend was staring at the wall and trying to force myself to do all the work that I didn’t have time to do during the week. Of course, nothing got done and I ended up in my bed for most of the afternoon.
Although we all understand that rest is important, I think we sometimes undervalue the importance of mental unloading. What does this look like? For me, I spent that Sunday, after giving up on any meaningful work, doing a quick clean of my room before watching three of the Twilight movies with my blinds closed and texting my friends from home about our weeks. No thinking involved, just solitude and talking to people who don’t make me feel like I need to behave a certain way all the time.
Did watching Twilight all afternoon make me feel better about all of the things that I needed to get done? Absolutely not. But it did let me relax my brain for a second. After a week of stress, being around too many people and doing too many things, I needed an afternoon of nothing to fully reset myself. And I think it worked.
Will I go back to pushing myself again this week? Who knows? All I know is that I have a lot of things to do and two more Twilight movies to watch before I can restart them again.
Take the time to let your brain reset. Rest as much as you need, sleep as much as your body needs you to, but don’t forget to turn your brain off for a minute. If you’re like me and overthink everything that’s ever happened to you, brain fog can be really, really harsh. The inability to focus turns into “Why can’t I concentrate?” which turns into rethinking everything that’s happened to you in the past few years and falling down a rabbit hole. I would much prefer to put that aside and watch a teenager pine over a vampire for a few hours.
Working until exhaustion doesn’t work
Exhaustion is something that none of us are unfamiliar with. The fifth-week tiredness has kicked in: most of us are suffering from some kind of stress-cold, annoyance or overwhelming workload. For me, it’s brain fog.
Working a lot, trying my hardest to stay on top of homework and trying hard this semester to be a more social being is beginning to catch up to me.
Let’s just put it this way: I’ve already used $50 of my Eagle Bucks at the Hiccup. I’m pretty sure if everyone stopped going there, I could keep them in business by myself. And so, despite constantly feeling like I could use either another Celsius or another latte, last week I pushed myself until I cried of exhaustion in the Bistro. What brought this minute-long cry on, you ask? They took about 15 minutes to make my sandwich. And because of this, I was late for a meeting.
I understand how dramatic that is. I was so tired, okay? So tired that a sandwich taking too long was detrimental to my well-being for about 10 minutes. And once I got to this meeting that I was a half hour late for, I contributed absolutely nothing of substance. This was on a Wednesday at 6 pm.
By Wednesday I had already pushed myself too hard. By Wednesday I had already told myself that I can take on “just one more task” before that “one” task turned into four and now I didn’t have time to wait for my dinner to be made or sit down for a minute and just take a breath.
So on Thursday I slept all day and by Friday I was ready to push myself again!
Being exhausted is something we all need to be taking more seriously. Taking time to allow ourselves to relax and do nothing for an hour or two everyday is so much more important than we realize most days.
Those of us with smaller social batteries may need even more time. I was with a friend all day on Saturday. By Sunday all my brain could even comprehend was staring at the wall and trying to force myself to do all the work that I didn’t have time to do during the week. Of course, nothing got done and I ended up in my bed for most of the afternoon.
I’m not even surprised by Bryan Kelly anymore
Although we all understand that rest is important, I think we sometimes undervalue the importance of mental unloading. What does this look like? For me, I spent that Sunday, after giving up on any meaningful work, doing a quick clean of my room before watching three of the Twilight movies with my blinds closed and texting my friends from home about our weeks. No thinking involved, just solitude and talking to people who don’t make me feel like I need to behave a certain way all the time.
Did watching Twilight all afternoon make me feel better about all of the things that I needed to get done? Absolutely not. But it did let me relax my brain for a second. After a week of stress, being around too many people and doing too many things, I needed an afternoon of nothing to fully reset myself. And I think it worked.
Will I go back to pushing myself again this week? Who knows? All I know is that I have a lot of things to do and two more Twilight movies to watch before I can restart them again.
Take the time to let your brain reset. Rest as much as you need, sleep as much as your body needs you to, but don’t forget to turn your brain off for a minute. If you’re like me and overthink everything that’s ever happened to you, brain fog can be really, really harsh. The inability to focus turns into “Why can’t I concentrate?” which turns into rethinking everything that’s happened to you in the past few years and falling down a rabbit hole. I would much prefer to put that aside and watch a teenager pine over a vampire for a few hours.