1. Cleaning
Even though I should have, this is honestly one thing that I didn’t expect to be as hard as it is. I mean, I’m not really a messy person – like to keep my room tidy enough and clean up after myself if I make a mess. But you don’t realize how hard it is to keep a house clean until you’re the one that has to do it.
2. Cooking for myself
I always enjoyed cooking for my family every once in a while when I lived back home, so I figured that cooking for myself would be easy – and I was wrong. First of all, you have to go grocery shopping which sucks, then you need to make the time to actually cook yourself something when you could be doing something else (like studying or relaxing from studying), then you need to clean up after yourself… it’s a chore. It can also be super hard cooking for one person, but I have gotten better at it this year.
3. Not seeing my dogs
Now, of course I miss my family, but my dogs are a huge emotional support for me, and any time I’m feeling particularly overwhelmed I find myself missing them more than usual. I was even considering getting an emotional support dog myself, but I can barely take care of myself, much less another living creature. Sigh.
4. Travelling home for the holidays
Some people struggle with this more than others, and some don’t really struggle at all, but it’s extremely hard for me to go home for the holidays since they live so far. It becomes an all-day affair of train and bus rides, which is no fun at all.
5. Keeping myself in check
I catch myself skipping meals and stuff like that all the time because I don’t have anyone to nag me about it. This applies to doing schoolwork too – although I never really had troubles with this in high school, in university I could definitely use a little nagging to get me to stop procrastinating.