Everything Feels Crazy Right Now!

        Everything feels crazy right now! If I’m being honest, it’s been a huge struggle trying to manage it all. Each day feels jam-packed and consists of nonstop work. As soon as one thing is done, it’s straight on to the next. It’s as if you’re frantically running on a hamster wheel because you’ve got to keep going and can only stop once everything has been accomplished. I kept wondering how much longer could I hold on before I slip up or end up falling down? I thought that as long as I push through and get the job done by the end of the day, then everything will be fine… but then something happened that made me realize this is not the case.

        On Monday night, I remember thinking to myself that I did it. All that had to be done was done. Everything is at peace for now, so just relax and brace yourself for tomorrow. Then Tuesday rolled around and it was a literal disaster. From the moment I awakened, my head was pounding, my body felt disgruntled, and it was as if the energy had been sucked right out of me. The whole day I was just powering through. I made sure to drink plenty of water and get fresh air, but nothing changed. By the end of the school day, I was completely physically broken down. I had to lie down because I was in no condition to start doing all my busy work. I felt frustrated and weak because I could no longer power through, but it was clear that I had to lie low. I was willing to start whittling away at my work in an hour’s time, but my parents insisted that I take the rest of the day easy, so therefore I adhered and spent the remainder of the day lying low and trying to alleviate my pounding head. Because tomorrow was an asynchronous school day (meaning we don’t show up to school but do work individually), I knew that I would have that whole day to catch up on assignments.

        Fortunately, I woke up the next day feeling a thousand times better. I made sure to go for a run (cause I didn’t do that in a while… yikes). Then I laid out everything I had to do and got right back on the horse. I was doing okay until it came to the filming of my audition (which I’m actually going to finish tomorrow) for orchestra. Because I wanted my recording to be the best that it can possibly be, I spent a crushing four or five hours playing my scales, which was: a) the easiest part of the audition; and b) only half important compared to the excerpts. This was a scenario when I let my perfectionist mindset and desire to want everything to be absolutely how I envision it to be override common sense and logical thinking. However, I’m not going to beat myself up about this because I’m human and I make mistakes. Okay, back to the story… so by the time I finished it was already 4 p.m., and I still had more than half of my assignments to do. I started to panic, I couldn’t concentrate, millions of thoughts were racing in my mind, I was hit with a surge of anxiety, and everything was just crashing down on me. I knew that I made a big, stupid mistake. There were many times when I’ve gone overboard and ended up spending so much time and energy on something to the point where it’s just too much. This time, I really paid the price, but I was also brought back to my senses. 

Those past two days made me do some soul searching. I definitely need to work on my time management, so I’m going to start instilling time constraints and not let myself get so deep into my work that I lose track of everything else that’s going on. Also, I’ve got to get off the hamster-on-the-wheel way of life. As we move forward, things are going to get more complicated and it can feel as if you’re barely getting through it all. Challenge and struggle is inevitable. There is no escaping that. But simply powering through, pouring out all your energy just to get everything done… it’s not sustainable and eventually you will be mentally exhausted. What happened earlier this week made me realize that I have to change my mindset and learn to control my brain. I have to develop certain habits and learn the art of mindfulness so that I can be in the present moment, acknowledge my thoughts, and embrace the pandemonium of the universe. Let’s be honest with ourselves and determine if our behavior is causing us to grow, decline, or stay stagnant. It’s up to you to choose what to do next.