Making Time For Yourself
how do adults with adult jobs and adult obligations do it !?!?!?
Tess and Bohmee,
So much has happened since we were last in the same city! I’ll let you both tell your ends of things, but, for my part, I was off gallivanting in Europe for about two weeks, and I’ve now returned to Toronto and started my summer job.
I’ve heard, from multiple adults with 9-5 jobs, that work is much easier than school because it truly finishes at 5pm every day. The other side of that coin, of course, is that it also starts at 9. Yes, unlike university, it doesn’t follow you home and keep you up until 3am, but it also asks you for the hours of your day when you’re at your most alert and when the weather is at its most enticing. Five days a week.
This has all got me thinking about what “time for yourself” really means–or what it means to me, I guess?
Now, I’ll start by saying that I’m only on day three of my summer job but that I love it so far. I’m interning at a magazine, so I get to read and write for a lot of the day, and about topics that interest me too! I feel extremely lucky, and it would be absolutely brilliant to do something like this for the rest of my life (except, like, not as an intern). Even still, trying to plan my days around my job is definitely a learning curve, especially when there are so many things that I want to do.
For one, 2024 is the first year that I have averaged over 10 000 steps a day (so far), which, though perhaps silly, is very exciting to me. But, on my first day of work, I only took a measly 3 500 steps! On another note, I am trying to have a summer of writing and submitting to literary magazines, and I know that the single best thing I can do for my writing practice is simply to make time every day. But when? Before work? After work? During my lunch break? And then, of course, I thrive most when I get regular exercise, which also requires both time and energy. I also want to make time to keep reading interesting books (I’m halfway through Orlando and I am not about to let it slip away from me). And I want lots of time with the people I love too!
And even if I manage to fit all that into my “five to nine” (a phrase that the girlboss influencers on Instagram reels are sooo fond of saying), I still feel like I’m missing “time for myself.”
And this is the thing I’ve been thinking about, right? Because time with friends, time to read, time to write, time to go on walks and exercise… That is definitionally time for myself. I mean, who else is it for? No one is paying me to get my 10 000 steps–I want to make time to walk around because I enjoy it and it makes me feel good. But, at the same time, if I were to rigorously plan my days to allot an hour to reading, writing, socializing, working out, etc. etc., I do not know that I would feel, at the end of the day, like I had space to relax.
Or maybe I would. Maybe I’m just not schedule-oriented enough to make it happen?
I don’t know. I guess I’ve been thinking about what “time for myself” really means–because I don’t think it means scrolling Instagram reels either. In fact, there’s arguably nothing I like less than scrolling Instagram reels. It is not fun and it does not relax me.
Maybe, when I put it into words, time for myself is just time that I get to choose how to spend–without the lingering feeling of “I should do this,” even if the subtext is “I should do this for myself” or “I should do this because I want to.” And there’s the dilemma, really. When you schedule your time full of things you want to be doing, you wind up feeling like there’s no time left that is truly “free.” But, when you don’t schedule your time full of things you want to be doing, you wind up spending far too much of it scrolling Instagram reels (which, really, you don’t even like, because the algorithm is awful) and you feel like the time is wasted.
Here’s what I’m thinking, guys. Maybe I’m oversimplifying things in thinking that time is either free or not free, for myself or for some other purpose. Maybe I need to find more ways to make time feel productive and freely given. Today, for example, I walked to a cafe during my lunch break and spent my afternoon working on an article with a matcha latte in hand. I would have found my work interesting from any location, but I think changing it up and getting outside allowed me to enjoy my afternoon in a way that is distinct, I think, from having a good day at work. So, as I continue to experiment with ways to structure my time, I think that’s the mindset I want to bring? I think I want to feel like time spent doing most things, including my job, can feel, at least sometimes, like “time for myself,” if I exercise control and intentionality over how I am doing what I’m doing.
All this, of course, does not apply to being in a job where you’re extremely busy at all hours and hardly have time to eat and sleep. Maybe I will be in a job like that down the line; maybe I won’t. If I am, I will have to learn an entirely different set of time management skills, a set of skills that (I imagine) involves expertise in compromise. For now, though, I’m teaching myself about balance, regularity, routine, and “making time for myself” in whatever capacity such a thing exists.
Dearest Amarah! I wish i could schedule Tess and Amarah and Bohmee time into all my days. Perhaps when I start my job I will re-read this delightful post and re-inquire to myself what “time for myself” really means. For now, I should probably answer texts and emails I’ve been avoiding in the name of “free time and no obligations.” I’m so happy to have had the time to read your writings!
We need a 4-day work week if only for Amarah to feel free