I know it's a little early still, but I'm quite ready for 2012 to end (the year, not the world, thank you), so I've been starting my personal year in review already over the past few weeks. While I'm not sad that any of the year happened, it was definitely not one of the best years. Unfortunately, most of this can be blamed on no one other than me, and while I'm taking steps to ensure that next year will be better, there are still a few more weeks of this one to endure.
In many, many ways, life is cyclical. A misjudged reaction to a given situation often nudges you too far into the opposite camp, and sets the wheels in motion for bouncing back and forth between extremes without finding balance. For example, spring semester this year was a little rough, and I was really looking forward to summer break. Despite the chaos of a month in Russia, however, I was extremely bored during the summer. As a result, when it came time to set up my schedule for fall semester, I overestimated how annoying a split schedule of work and classes would be, and have been struggling to not feel overwhelmed.
The key to remember in this particular situation is that everyone has a different definition of "busy." For me, I like to be effectively active from 9-5, preferably, and then have the rest of the day to do whatever hobbies, crafts, or personal enrichment classes strike my fancy. If I don't have those 8 hours of productive (and that is the key word- productive) work, I don't feel like I'm really doing enough. Even if the rest of my time is crammed full of driving, classes, homework, volunteering, etc, I just won't feel like I've earned the right to consider myself "busy," regardless of how exhausted I am from everything else.
By contrast, I know people who do fill up almost every waking hour of their days- seven days a week even- with demands on their times, and do not feel as if they are overworked. On the other end, I've met people who work less than 20 hours a week, then go home and sit on their couch playing video games, and complain about how overworked and overstressed they are. It's all a matter of perspective.
The problem I ran into this semester is that, technically, I'm only working 13 hours a week, and attending 3 classes, for a total of 9 hours in-class. That is way below my personal standard of 8 hours a day, so I've felt unproductive. What I was inconveniently overlooking, though, is the hours of homework, translations, transportation time (since my classes are fit in between my working hours, and I have to dash back and forth between the two), writing papers, and studying for tests that aren't wrapped up in those 22 hours per week. The dance classes I take at night were back to back with college classes, so they got oddly entangled in the stress of a regular workday, even though they should have been relaxing. And last but not least, I let a game get way too serious.
Just as people let their jobs take over their lives because people around them are doing so, I was letting something that should have been fun start to feel like a job. What began as a group of friends getting together two nights a week to game together slowly- over the course of the past year- turned way too serious. Without once asking us if we wanted to go this route, the leader of the group became a fanatic for moving us up the ranks. Instead of just playing when we wanted to, new rules began to appear. First we had to gather materials for the group at leas 1 hour per week. Then we also had to make sure to complete all the available quests, every day, to get our reputations with various outside groups up (something that would take at least 2-3 hours per day). Then we also had to "donate" certain kinds of materials every week, on top of all the other stuff. By the time I reached my limit, what used to only take up 8 hours a week had become 20-30 hours a week, and all the fun had gone out of the game.
Realizing that what should have been an outlet for relaxation had come to demand more time than my actual job and school put together, I decided I'd had enough. I gave 2 weeks' notice (I'm not a big fan of just walking out and screwing other people over), and started to distance myself from the people who were being too serious. Almost immediately, my days were less stressful, I had a better outlook on life, and I was more willing to do the things I did have to do, since they weren't being crowded by the things I didn't have to do.
So while I still have a little bit more time left to deal with stressful people and a disjointed schedule, just having identified my mistakes and set out to correct them in the future has made the last few weeks of this year look a lot better. I'm still ready for the year to end, but I can face it with a lot more patience and optimism, knowing that I've recalibrated my idea of "busy" (and also, my idea of important!). Cheers!
In many, many ways, life is cyclical. A misjudged reaction to a given situation often nudges you too far into the opposite camp, and sets the wheels in motion for bouncing back and forth between extremes without finding balance. For example, spring semester this year was a little rough, and I was really looking forward to summer break. Despite the chaos of a month in Russia, however, I was extremely bored during the summer. As a result, when it came time to set up my schedule for fall semester, I overestimated how annoying a split schedule of work and classes would be, and have been struggling to not feel overwhelmed.
The key to remember in this particular situation is that everyone has a different definition of "busy." For me, I like to be effectively active from 9-5, preferably, and then have the rest of the day to do whatever hobbies, crafts, or personal enrichment classes strike my fancy. If I don't have those 8 hours of productive (and that is the key word- productive) work, I don't feel like I'm really doing enough. Even if the rest of my time is crammed full of driving, classes, homework, volunteering, etc, I just won't feel like I've earned the right to consider myself "busy," regardless of how exhausted I am from everything else.
By contrast, I know people who do fill up almost every waking hour of their days- seven days a week even- with demands on their times, and do not feel as if they are overworked. On the other end, I've met people who work less than 20 hours a week, then go home and sit on their couch playing video games, and complain about how overworked and overstressed they are. It's all a matter of perspective.
The problem I ran into this semester is that, technically, I'm only working 13 hours a week, and attending 3 classes, for a total of 9 hours in-class. That is way below my personal standard of 8 hours a day, so I've felt unproductive. What I was inconveniently overlooking, though, is the hours of homework, translations, transportation time (since my classes are fit in between my working hours, and I have to dash back and forth between the two), writing papers, and studying for tests that aren't wrapped up in those 22 hours per week. The dance classes I take at night were back to back with college classes, so they got oddly entangled in the stress of a regular workday, even though they should have been relaxing. And last but not least, I let a game get way too serious.
Just as people let their jobs take over their lives because people around them are doing so, I was letting something that should have been fun start to feel like a job. What began as a group of friends getting together two nights a week to game together slowly- over the course of the past year- turned way too serious. Without once asking us if we wanted to go this route, the leader of the group became a fanatic for moving us up the ranks. Instead of just playing when we wanted to, new rules began to appear. First we had to gather materials for the group at leas 1 hour per week. Then we also had to make sure to complete all the available quests, every day, to get our reputations with various outside groups up (something that would take at least 2-3 hours per day). Then we also had to "donate" certain kinds of materials every week, on top of all the other stuff. By the time I reached my limit, what used to only take up 8 hours a week had become 20-30 hours a week, and all the fun had gone out of the game.
Realizing that what should have been an outlet for relaxation had come to demand more time than my actual job and school put together, I decided I'd had enough. I gave 2 weeks' notice (I'm not a big fan of just walking out and screwing other people over), and started to distance myself from the people who were being too serious. Almost immediately, my days were less stressful, I had a better outlook on life, and I was more willing to do the things I did have to do, since they weren't being crowded by the things I didn't have to do.
So while I still have a little bit more time left to deal with stressful people and a disjointed schedule, just having identified my mistakes and set out to correct them in the future has made the last few weeks of this year look a lot better. I'm still ready for the year to end, but I can face it with a lot more patience and optimism, knowing that I've recalibrated my idea of "busy" (and also, my idea of important!). Cheers!
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