All I can say is that I’ve had a super busy and crazy week.

It’s happened to the best of us, where we’ve overloaded ourselves to the point where we become totally stressed out about everything, and sadly that happened to me in the past few days.

I’m definitely trying to get into the swing of managing my time for school. That has always been a difficult thing for me to do, and it has cost me in the past before too. Blocking out time to do stuff and sticking to that is just so difficult for me, because so many things happen in life that change plans. I also get pretty distracted easily so if I’m not interested in what I am doing too much then I divert to something else, causing me to push off projects or other things to do until the very last minute.

Another thing causing stress in my life is work. It is essential to work because I need money to live, but I went a little bit too overboard with working hours that I never had time to do homework after work. I’d always be so tired that I’d only do work for a few minutes before needing to sleep.

Something else happened in my life that has caused major changes is that I moved! I’d always been looking for a place to move out to, and the perfect opportunity showed itself, so I took a leap of faith. So far, I have been loving my new place. But spending all of the time moving in over a few days caused me to not be able to get anything else done. A lot of my projects got done late at night since I was busy all day moving my life from one place to another.

So, I have all this stuff going on in my life, and it’s causing me stress. So, I did some research on things that I might try after writing this blog in order for my life to be less stressful with all of the things I have going on in my life.

The first thing I should do, and have been meaning to do for a while, is to minimize the amount of screen time I do. I work on a computer all day designing, then I usually “rest” by staring at my screen for the rest of the day. All of this screen staring isn’t really the best for me, so I might try to pick up new hobbies or continue old ones to do in my free time. Staring at screens less will also fix my sleep schedule, which is next on my list.

I usually stay up late fixing projects and wake up just before leaving for classes. Fixing my sleep schedule so that I’m not up super late will be extremely beneficial for me as a designer. I will aim for going to bed before midnight with no screen time at least 20 minutes before falling asleep. Doing this will help me to relax before sleep will probably help me sleep better too. I should also practice waking up at a reasonable time. By doing both of these things, I can do some of my design work at night and some in the morning, so no more super early mornings or super late nights.

One more thing I can do to reduce my stress is to meditate, which is something I’ve always wanted to try but have never done. Meditation helps focus all the thoughts in your mind from this jumbled mess and puts you at peace with everything that is going on in your life. I think I will try to include 15 minutes of meditating after I get back from school just so I can take all of the information I gained in a day and just put it to peace in my mind.

If you are dealing with stress, make sure you take time for yourself. Getting your work done is important so don’t put that off entirely, but make sure you are in a headspace that is calm and peaceful when possible. Stress can take over someone’s life, but there is plenty of ways to fix it. And, there’s always help out there if you need it.

TC