Monday, February 24, 2014

Two points for honesty

Ah, life lately.  I haven't been great about prioritizing.  A bunch of things I said "yes" to a while back all came to a head recently.  FIVE straight nights and days of social commitments and work events, compounded now with a short-notice business trip and finals week for a class I haven't been so great at.  Don't get me wrong, I loved the time I spent with my friends and coworkers and participating in some amazing projects.  It made me realize how lucky I am to be living this exhaustingly great life.  Even though every morning I'm like this:


But in the end, it resulted in two days of me feeling pretty terrible.  I felt body aches, chills, congestion, and overall pain.  Like a full-blown flu, over a weekend.  I spent so much time trying to do it all, it landed me flat out on my back.  I'm happy it was over the weekend so I could recover, but unhappy I didn't accomplish everything I'd planned.


I feel like the biggest challenge has been to balance work plus grad school, then be intentional from there about what I can really take on.  For example, I've stepped back from a couple of volunteer gigs to focus on my favorite, DAR.  I've joined a fantastic book club full of badass babes, but we only meet once a month and the books are always easy reads.  I try to see my friends enough to stay close, and they're always informed enough to know I'm not blowing them off.  Dan and I spend more quality time just being at home, instead of going out.

Basically, I'm a hot mess, trying to get it under control.  I don't feel like being busy is an excuse, because it's really just about prioritizing better.  I want to sew more, write more, read more, travel more, but it's just not in the cards right now.  I'm getting by.


I'm just a little dead on my feet, and I *look* tired to boot.  Like eye bag city.  One of my coworkers, watching me leave work in a cocktail dress to head to volunteer at a charity gala, asked me, "How do you find the time?"  And I told her, "I don't have the time.  I'm failing.  But it'll get better."

It will get better.  Because I'm going to say no to more and yes to myself.

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6 comments:

  1. I find it hard to say no also. And then I wind up bailing on things last minute, which makes me feel worse than if I had just said no in the first place. Sigh. It's still a work in progress.

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    1. I find I'm enjoying the time I save by saying "no" up front. It's harder for women I think.

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  2. i have big plans for myself and i was talking to Nick recently when I said "how do i politely tell all my friends that i can't hangout for the next two months?"

    i feel your pain. you def need to take a break and focus on yourself so you can recharge. when i realized that every time you say 'yes' to something you are actually saying 'no' to something else— it became a lot easier for me to say no to things i didn't really wanna do. people might think it's selfish, but once i started saying yes to myself first, then my mental health and anxiety improved greatly. and you know what? no one started hating me for it! one of my favorite quotes is "You have to say no to a lot of good things in order to be able to say yes to a lot of great things."

    hang in there, aubrey!

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    1. Jenna, the best thing is to just tell your friends the truth, because they ought to understand!!! We love you and we're super excited for the big stuff happening for you.

      Also, I went to a Women Leading Powerfully course back in December, and they told us that good leaders decline as much as they accept, because of EXACTLY what you wrote... saying YES to one thing is saying NO to another. We have to be honest with ourselves about how valuable our time is, because there's a finite amount of it. I think as women we feel like it's arrogant to think our time is worth so much, but we need to be honest about our worth. Period.

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  3. On a totally serious note, adorable Mitch and Scott from Pentatonix provide a list 101 Ways to Ditch Your Friends.

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    1. OMG I just saw your post about the PTX concert and I CANNOT WAIT to see them next month! Eeeeeeekkkk!

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