For this semester, I’ve been asking myself, “how do I balance work and rest?” As classes are beginning to wrap up, I continue to ask this question, as I struggle to find the time for myself and my work.
At the beginning of my work from home experience, it was easy for me to keep track of time, to balance my tasks, and still get some downtime. Each week, I always knew a week in advance how my schedule would look so I would know what I needed to do and avoid procrastinating. So far, this is the easy part.
As work began to pile up in each of my classes, deadlines coinciding with one another, I found it hard to stay on track with my tasks, schedule, and time. To top it all off, due to daylight savings, I was now living on a 13 hour time difference, which made it hard for me to stay awake for some of my classes.
On weekdays, I would wake up early, doing work on my computer, sometimes frantically finishing up my work minutes before the deadline. From day to night, I stare at the glaring light of my laptop just completing my assignments. If I am lucky, maybe I can watch a movie or take a quick nap.
During the weekends, I am still glued to my computer, typing away on my keyboard. However, I would take breaks, naps, or spend time with my family. After resting, I am back to work whether it be doing assignments, reading stories for Concrete Literary Magazine, or writing for Her Campus. Even if I am not doing work, I am constantly thinking about the work that needs to be done for the following week, asking myself, “What assignment will I start with on Monday? What are some of the homework that is due next week? How much time would I need to complete this paper? When should I start the paper?” The more I asked these questions and thought about it, the more my adrenaline rushed.
As I continued to spend my days working around the clock, I struggled to keep up my energy, relying on tea or coffee to help me. But sometimes, even that couldn’t sustain my energy, and most of the time all I could think about was sleeping. In a way, you can say I burnt myself out.
This got to the point where I was burning energy that I didn’t have. I kept pushing myself to finish my tasks for the day, sometimes take quick breaks. However, even when I took breaks, I was stressed, thinking “what if I miss the deadline? what if I don’t submit good work?”
Sometimes this feeling was so overwhelming that my heart would start racing, and I would feel like crying. Even looking at my work on Canvas made me anxious. When this began to happen continuously, there were days where I found it difficult to take a 20-minute power nap as the thought of work kept swirling around in my head.
When I didn’t have that much work, and I took the day for myself, I was conflicted. I was happy but at the same time, I felt guilty that I wasn’t doing work, which made me even more stressed.
I don’t have a lot of words of wisdom, as I am still figuring out this unchartered territory myself. But from my experience, I think the key is to be easy on yourself. There are times when things will not go your way, that you will not always be at your peak. So take your day slowly, and be kind to yourself. This will definitely ease the mental burdens and allow us to feel relaxed, even if we have a full day of work ahead of us. Sometimes, even trying to take time away from your computer and phone can ease that stress, to allow us to recenter and focus on ourselves.
Going online is not easy; it can cause strain not only physically but also mentally. However, if when you do find the balance between work and rest, it can make the workload doable and your life easier. But even then, there will be bumps along the road and when this happens you have to be ready to adjust.