CW: disordered eating, body dysmorphia It’s mid-summer, which means vacations, pool days, barbecues, and spending time outside. It also means wearing shorts and swimsuits and spending a lot of time eating around others. Summer was always so much fun when I was younger. I loved swimming, running around in the sprinkler, grilling out with family and friends, and just generally …
Let Yourself Have Fun
Last week, I wrote about how I check in with myself while experiencing different stages of my mental illness. I talked about how I could feel a depressive episode starting and the ways I try to take care of myself in those times. About 12 hours after finishing my blog, I decided it was time to switch things up and …
Check In With Yourself, Too
This week, I was inspired to write about checking in with yourself after reading Ivy’s blog about checking in with others. Her blog post resonated with me so much this week. On the day it came out, my partner talked to me about a lot of things he’d been wanting to share but didn’t know how or didn’t feel like …
Slow Down on Scrolling
I spend a lot of time on social media. Like…a lot. It’s partially due to the fact that I work in social media, but even when I’m not working, I’m scrolling. Lately, a lot of the content I’m consuming is from TikTok. It’s my most-used app, according to my phone’s screen time report. I’ll spend hours a day just scrolling …
Celebrate the Good in Life
This week has been amazing. It feels like one of those weeks that starts a shift in life. For the first time in a long time, I’ve felt happy with everything I’ve done the whole week. It started with being on vacation with people I love in a place that’s calm and beautiful. Then, after weeks of moving between two …
Take Time for Yourself
This week, I’m going on a much-needed vacation. As I write this, I’m actually in the car on the way to the lake house. I haven’t taken time off since October of 2020. Since then, as I’ve talked about in the past, I’ve been working approximately 70 hours every week. Roughly 40 of those have been working in the service …
Let Go of What No Longer Serves You
Life is short—too short to spend time and energy on things that don’t serve us or our goals and morals. For a very long time, I believed that in order to be successful and to be happy, I had to follow a certain plan. I had to work my way up, pay my dues, live in service of other people’s …
Slow Down + Breathe
Do you ever feel like you’re racing against an invisible clock? Like if you don’t get this task done right now, some non-existent timer will go off and something bad will happen? I’ve always been the type of person who wants to get things done as soon as I can. I’ll come up with a project and just do it. …
Self-Care for Service Workers
Recently, as you may have noticed, there’s been a labor shortage in the foodservice industry. From coffee shops to drive-throughs to sit-down restaurants, the industry has seen both an increased demand for their product and a decreased supply of employees. It’s not my place, nor is this the platform, to speculate about why there’s a labor shortage. As an employee …
It’s Okay to Lose Motivation for a Moment—It Will Come Back
It’s been a long week—one of those weeks that feels like it’ll never end. From working both of my jobs to getting ready to move to having a minor dog emergency, it feels like I’ve been in constant motion, both physically and emotionally. I’ve talked a lot about burnout and how to avoid it in the past, but sometimes it’s …