This week my life has felt particularly busy; between classes, exercise, writing papers, study time in the anatomy lab, grocery shopping and cooking, cleaning, spending time connecting with my husband, and searching for a summer job, it doesn’t feel like there is much time leftover to sleep or breathe. Don’t get me wrong, I love my life and I choose to make it busy! But there is always a point where the semester reaches a boiling point, and that boiling point is now.
How do I prioritize all of these responsibilities in life?
- Exercise. Exercise is always my number-one priority. In order for me to have any prayer at accomplishing anything else on my to-do list, I need to me in a good state of mind. Without fail, exercise does this for me. I can be virtually unraveling, but give me an hour on the elliptical and I’ll be just fine by the end. It’s like exercise presses my internal ‘reset’ button.
- Classes and Homework. I’m not paying $10,000 dollars a year in tuition to skip class and blow off my homework, ’nuff said!
- Cleaning. Similiar to exercise, a clean environment is good for my mood. I find the messier my apartment is, the crankier I am!
- Hubby Time. I try to spend real quality time connecting with Zach everyday. Sometimes it’s not until 10 or 11 at night that we finally get to plop down on the couch to catch up and then watch a few minutes of TV. It’s not even the TV that I look forward to, it’s the foot rubs while we watch 🙂
- Grocery Shopping and Cooking. I try to do the bulk of my cooking on the weekends and always keep super easy snacks around. This priority moves to number one if there is no food around — a girls gottta eat! And I simply don’t keep junk food around so there isn’t that temptation.
- Everything Else. Anything else that I want to do (like blogging and hanging out with friends) gets scheduled around the above.
I never get as much done as I want to in a day, but that’s life. When I’m feeling overwhelmed, I like to remember the quote that I read in Oxygen: everyone shares the same 24 hours in a day.
Priorities are on the brain because yesterday I had an exercise in managing them. I was supposed to workout hard yesterday, and then take today as my weekly rest day, but we really needed groceries and I needed to study in the Anatomy lab. I didn’t have time to do all three. I decided to take my rest day to yesterday and go to the Anatomy lab and go grocery shopping. Today, I want to exercise and go to the Anatomy lab, but I don’t have time for both. Today my choice has to be exercise. Life is a balancing act!
Well, now I’m off to the gym 🙂
fitnessaficionada 