Taking time to recharge

The older I get the more I realize how stressful life can be, and how important self-care and mental health is. Finding things that are beneficial to you and your soul is something I continue to seek and learn about myself. It’s a weird kind of growth… the kind that you didn’t even know you needed until you have it. A type of fire that is lit and continues to grow and grow the more you add to it. Though, when you add certain things to it, can make it dimmer or even put it out. On the flip side adding things that are good for you can make the fire burn brighter. These things are what I call “soul food”. The things that you live for and make you feel more like you. Re-fueling your empty gas tank to make it full again, and ready to embark on another adventure.

After this semester in college, which was one of my hardest yet, I needed one of these recharge times. The way our education system is and how much our grades and GPA define us gives many of us so much anxiety and stressors we don’t need. It has taken me a few years to finally get to the point where I can feel comfortable with myself and know that grades DO NOT define who you are. You define who you are. Period. Society puts an enormous amount of pressure on us in this generation to get a college degree and the constant testing on how well we can remember information and produce it on a test instead of understanding and retaining it. It’s important to remember that when things don’t go your way, that sometimes that’s the best thing. For me, that is God opening and closing doors you can’t even see. It’s hard not to feel as though everything is falling apart when a plan/goal you’ve been trying to achieve for a long time suddenly goes south. Just know it all happens for a reason no matter who or what you believe in. The universe is in a constant battle of balance. Push through. Stay strong. You got this.

So after exams, and the 2 hours a sleep a night from exam week (the worst week in a college kid’s semester as we all know) I decided to go to Florida to take a vacation before I came back for summer classes. A sort of detox from the outside world. It was a last-minute trip to see a few friends and see my grandparents (who is the cutest couple ever and who love to play board games all the time, so I had to attach a picture I took of them). To make a long story short, most of the trip didn’t go as planned and it was hard to feel as though your escape was just another mistake. It rained the entire trip except one day when I was at Cocoa beach; yet I still made the best of it.  It was the ME time I needed. Hearing the waves crash on the shore, the sun hitting my skin, the slightly salty breeze. The best thing was opening a book and just getting lost in it. Losing sense of what the outside world was offering and seeing what the book had instead. A few of my other soul foods that I love include traveling, reading, meditation, understanding nature/animals, and making new memories. After the beach I went to a zoo nearby to see animals of all kinds (another one my favorite activities). At the Brevard Zoo they have the opportunity to kayak through the African exhibit (the only zoo in the United States to have this). Here you pass by the giraffes, cheetahs, ostriches, lemurs, and gazelles. It was again another peaceful moment where you just realize how amazing life really is and how the simplest of things can mean the most.

Moral to this blog is to take time out of your busy schedule to focus on yourself… whatever that might consist of. Go on a run with your dog, binge watch a new series, go swimming at the lake with your friends, get a large popcorn at the movies with extra butter. No matter what it is, make sure it’s important to your mental health and that it makes you feel more like you. What is you without all the things that make up you? Now that’s a brain boggle haha. All the special, weird, and funny quirks that some people love and others make fun of. Embrace that. Be who you want, not what others want to see. Keep your mind healthy and make sure to keep a constant daily note to check-up on yourself (which is honestly one the hardest things for me since I’d rather see someone else happy rather than myself). Smile. Laugh more. And remember… life is short so you might as well enjoy what you’re doing with your time and energy.