Come on a Walk with Me!

So! The world changed. Now let me assure you that I’m not here to reiterate statistics, world news or dwelling in everything that is currently bringing stress and anxiety into our lives, instead I wanna give you a window into some of my thoughts regarding self-care and routine as well as taking you on a walk with me.

In the last month or two I have seen my own personal everyday and weekly routine thrown out the window. Not only have my regular pastimes ceased to be a part of my life, but my social life has become a thing of the Internet and phone-calls. To put it mildly I’m bored! I am bored and craving social interactions face to face! But with all this extra time on my hands I surely have gotten a lot done in the last month? Passion projects? Hobbies I usually don’t have or make time for? No. For the longest time I’ve gotten absolutely nothing done. Fortunately that has now changed.

I am personally of the belief that in order to solve a problem one must first diagnose the root cause of said problem. And for me the lack of productivity appears to come from my fear of meeting my own expectations.
It is a problem that I have encountered many times throughout my life, especially in regards to school. Every little task becomes a giant project and every aspect of it has to be done absolutely perfectly, and should it be anything less than perfect I have failed. This was the mindset that had presented itself once again and it quickly became a self-feeding downward spiral: the less I got done, the more ashamed I became of myself, the more I felt defeated and even more projects and chores were pushed aside because clearly I was not perfect enough to get them done perfectly.
This sounds quite dramatic I know, but that was my mindset. However! With the problem diagnosed a solution could now be crafted!

First things first: a basic routine was needed to restore my energy and give me a sense of normalcy. And I do mean a very basic routine, so do not expect anything fancy.
For me a basic routine includes a time to get up, a time by which I have showered and gotten dressed, times set out for the three main meals of the day, a walk, a time by which the most basic everyday chores have been done (making the bed, cleaning the dishes etc.) and last but not least bedtime. I sat down with one of my way too many notebooks and plotted it out ignoring passion projects and other things I felt that I should be doing and just kept everything to the bare minimum. And though I have not been perfect in sticking exactly to that baseline of a routine every single day (Yes, I stayed in bed watching kpop music videos to 10am before I got up!) It has so far been quite the success.
Second part in beating the Perfection Monster included me making a list of everything I not only want to get done this month, but also what I absolutely need to get done before May rolls around. That list came out to be 24 bullet points and looking quite intimidating, but still it gave me the overview I needed. Lastly I needed a set of tools to get it done, or at least mostly done by the end of April.
Enter Camp NaNiWriMo! If you’re unfamiliar with NaNoWriMo it’s basically the challenge to write 50.000 words in a month during November every year, and during Camp which happens in both April and July you get to set your own goal. So I logged on to their web page and created a project called “Get Shit Done Month” and pretended that my tracker was minutes instead of words. I set my goal to 2.700 minutes averaging out to 90 minutes a day.
With a list of projects and chores, a tracker and some good old fashioned motivation I have been dealing with the Perfection Monster and winning! I have not spent 90 minutes everyday, but every little thing helps and being able to cross off things as I get them done is very satisfying, not to mention that I’ve promised myself a pair of new pantyhose from Pamela Mann should I manage to cross off the entire list.

And speaking of rewards I just wanna take a moment to talk about the difference of self care and self indulgence before I leave you and walk home.
During the time of loosing my routine and being paralyzed with anxiety the one thing I practiced was self indulgence. I deserved it right? I felt so bad and I couldn’t get anything done, the least I could do was being kind to myself. Yes and no. When not kept in check self indulgence quickly becomes sloth and gluttony, and instead of being kind to oneself one ends up making the situation worse and halting any progress that can be made. Do not get me wrong, self indulgence can be good for you in small doses, but the most important thing you can do for yourself is self care.
Self care covers everything from showering and eating healthily, to having a spa-day and watching your favourite movie. It is what lays the foundation to build your mental and physical health upon, and the reason for me working out a basic everyday routine before even attempting working on everything I wanted and needed to get done. Having a regular sleeping and eating schedule, making sure I get some fresh air and basic exercise everyday and keep myself and my home clean and tidy gives me the energy, again mentally and physically, to achieve what I want not only these days, but during other more normal times as well.

And with that it’s time for me to get back home. I hope you enjoyed this little walk with me. Stay kind to yourself, to others and be responsible and levelheaded.

And I’ll see you in the next one.