It’s Sunday night – well, Tuesday Morning by the time I post this – and I’ve been staring at my damn laptop for around 2 hours working on different blog posts and editing photos and videos and basically getting nothing done. Sometimes we get stuck on overdrive. I am the type of person with the never-ending to-do list. I am like a hamster on a wheel with lists for every aspect of my life. It feels like that wheel has just been relentlessly turning but I am too afraid to get off…
The past couple of weeks has been intense. I have 3 weddings coming up in a span of 6 weeks in 3 different countries. I have been pretty stressed at work. I have also been on a calorie restrictive diet, so no binge eating to make myself feel better. All of this has lead to mind fog. I feel like I have been going through the motions, but not really getting anything done. If you feel the same, don’t worry you are not alone.
We all love it when things are going well, and if you’re anything like me you can get strangely addicted to being busy. It makes you feel all grown up and important. We get so used to being in girl boss mode and trying to have it all that things can get a little crazy and out of hand. Women are naturally great hustlers, hence we are all girl bosses at some level.
Plus the pressure of seeing everyone else on the internet being a girl-boss makes the pressure worse for us. Social media highlights everyone’s best moments, so quite naturally if we are not measuring up to everyone’s perfect moments then we feel like we are going to fall behind in life. But when we continue down this path of running at 100 miles per hour, our feet are off the ground and we can’t quite pin ourselves down and we start to let things slip. We don’t get things done and we mentally punish ourselves for it. The guilt we get for not completing our taste is totally normal, but sometimes the story we build up in our head is totally unnecessary.
If you are feeling burnt out or tired all the time then take a break. The world will not stop because you do. You’ll be more angry at yourself for producing poor work than if you take a couple of days and come back to it. I was personally long overdue for a vacation for work. I took the long weekend and a few extra days to just get away and focus on things I love, like photography and travel. After only 48 hours of being away, I feel so much better about so many aspects of my life.
So whether it’s working on your dissertation, essay, blog post, novel, or powerpoint presentation and it’s not happening in your head, don’t force it. No good things are going to come from beating yourself up about it all. Take a break, because you need it and deserve it. And go and watch some Ryan Gosling or Zac Efron on the internet (you can thank me later for this tip).