For many of us, summer is the time of year we most look forward to due to its never-ending supply of sunny days and outdoor fun and feelings of freedom and play and relaxation.
As a (former) teacher, summers took on an even more special tone, as they were literally what helped me regain my sanity, regroup my sense of self, and just take a mental break from it all.
This summer has not disappointed in all those respects, and I’m definitely grateful for all the time I’ve had to go out on all sorts of adventures and spend a ton of time with both Matt’s and my family and work really, really hard on some of my personal goals (like training for my half marathon and working on my photography and sticking to a more regular blogging schedule).
But today, I’m feeling a bit burned out from all the adventure and the hard work on hobbies and the drastic changes in routines and the fact that I feel like I haven’t had a “normal” day in seemingly forever. Today, I’m feeling burned out from working out nearly every day (as well as watching my calories), yet watching in horror as the scale manages to actually slide up instead of down. Today I’m feeling burned out from trying to push myself to take on more photography projects and watch more tutorials and study other artists’ work so that I can better improve my own.
Today, I was supposed to do my last post on Island Park and then upload all the pics from the family campout we just got back from so that I could start to prepare to post about that in the near future. Later this afternoon I was going to do a strength workout to try and somehow help beat back this weight and then maybe squeeze in some time to work on my book, since I haven’t written in it yet this week. Then, as we neared the 5 o’clock hour, I intended to do a fridge sweep and put together a healthy meal based on the foods that we needed to use up the quickest.
But then, as I sat down to write a post and nothing came up but a vague buzzing in my head and a strong urge to go take a nap, I decided to just cut myself a true rest day already and not feel guilty about it (for once).
So today, I’m giving myself permission to let it all go, to finally catch up on all the reading I’ve been meaning to do (especially since my library books are all due back in 3 days), to listen to my favorite podcast, and to finally clear off the kitchen counter (which will bring me more peace of mind than it probably should).
Summer 2016, I have loved you immensely, but today, I need my space.
Hopefully my energy levels will be feeling back to normal come Friday (when I’m due to post again).
