A Balanced Lifestyle

By. Kylie Conroy

Summer always seems to set these high expectations for us.

The romanticization of the summer always seems to be better than summer itself.

I used to make these summer videos and post them at the end of summer to show off how magical my summer was, but those videos stopped once I left for college because summer surprisingly turned into a different thing once college came around the corner. But that's just like the same way Christmas is once we finally learn Santa Clause is not real. That's just growing up.

Growing up before leaving for college summer was all anyone ever looked forward to.

What could be better? No school? No worries? and all the time in the world for fun?

This summer excitement and summer of no worries starts to change as you get older. Your free time is either time for you to start making some money or take care of the thing you need to take care of; priorities.

Coming home from college for the summer is a bittersweet experience.

On the one hand, it's the chance to be able to re-visit old friendships and reconnect with people while indulging in familiar surroundings where you grew up. The change feels safe, or at least it's supposed to.

On the other hand, this return home can be confusing as well. In some cases, it seems as if you lose your independence all over again, which you gained from being away at school. Suddenly you're not on your own anymore, you're back under the roof of those who raised you and you feel like a kid again.

Last summer I had a difficult time navigating this challenge and instead of going about this transitional period with grace and resilience, I overworked myself and isolated myself for the most part by working 3 Jobs. This summer I'm trying to go about this transition with a bit more grace and balance. The saying that balance is the key to everything in life may just turn out to be right.

Im going to state a few tips about how I for one am going to go about this summer with more balance to minimize the stress and anxiety that seemed to overwhelm me last summer. By doing this I instead am going to explore and test out more ways to juggle and balance work, self-care, friends, and summer training.

One important thing to do in order to keep balance in your life is to use your time wisely and prioritize the tasks you need to get done:

Although it is summertime and you are supposed to be a little bit more relaxed for the most part, in reality, we aren't. Many of us, especially college kids have a lot of obligations and priorities that need to get done throughout the week:

Create a Routine!! ---sticking to a routine can be helpful

Although creating a routine can be helpful to maintain order in our life like some of us may have had while being away at school with class schedules, it also is important at the same time to allow this routine to shift based on our needs.

I sometimes will plan to run earlier in the morning but wake up and feel the need to sleep in then for the most part I can shift my routine to run later in the day that's okay if that's what my body needs that morning.

But then again

if im going to go out the night before and I know I have work that day then I know im going to force, myself to walk up early and get that run done. It's a balance based on needs, wants, and self-care.

Plan out the important things Sunday night for the following week

I have been doing that to balance whether or not I can shift my routine or not. Clearly, you can't just decide to move your dr appt later in the day if you don't feel like waking up or not going to work because you are tired so having the must-get-done items on a list gives us the opportunity to fill in other priorities that can be shifted.

I more recently have been trying to set goals for each day that im going to accomplish: I am the type of person that strives for a goal to achieve so having smaller goals to accomomposh that week or day even if small like cleaning my bathroom or my car, once I get that task done I feel productive and good about myself.

That feeling of productiveness or like I did something with my day allows me to give myself that ability to enjoy myself and maybe go do something with my friends.

I realized when I don't have anything to do for the day I end up fully doing nothing because the thought of allowing myself to have fun when I accomplished nothing for the day makes me feel anxious and maybe that's a deep-rooted issue of mine somewhere, but it forces me to do something if anything with my day.

As for running, this is one of my main priorities and for other people in my life running may be a leisure for them.

My priority every week is to get in my planned mileage.

Since this is my goal and one of my main goals I had coming into the summer, im going to stick to that.

Last summer, I let some people get in my way of running. Im not going to be afraid to say no to things because I have to run.

Running is something that's important to me and im not going to let other people's thoughts or opinions get in the way of what I need to get done.

I love my family and friends but sometimes it's difficult for other people to understand that feeling of anxiety when you don't hit that mileage.

I was told you don't have to run and I should just want to run. but if I only ran when I wanted to run where would my goals be and how would that even work? surely I want to achieve my goals and even if at that moment I may not want to do it I force myself to get it done because that's where my goals and progress stand.

Eating habits:

Planning out when im going to eat is an important piece of this puzzle and also a priority that needs to fit into my schedule.

The hot weather causes us to be more tired and working a lot requires extra calories!

Last summer I had a hard time eating while working. One thing that im trying to do this time around is to make sure I eat breakfast in the morning. Starting the day knowing I ate a good breakfast is the first step to success for a good day!

Tip:

- Make smoothies that are easy to consume and bring when you are busy + bring smoothies to work or to whatever you have to do for that day

- Or bring some easy snacks to eat during your shift!

this goes along with my health itself:

- I realized how important my eating habits are in the past few months and the one thing I never want to experience again is another stress fracture. Eating and taking care my of body is the first step to that so this is definably a priority that I need to stick by.

Work itself as a balance - but also considered a priority...

My summer last year was a hectic hurricane of me waking up 3 days a week at 5:30 am to drive to sag harbor to work all day and get home around 7 pm

At that point what energy do you have for anything...

And for that matter to run after work too?

By 8:30 I was shot, dehydrated and ready for bed.

On top of that job, I was lifeguarding and working in a restaurant.So, the only balance there was the balance of juggling 3 jobs and my well being. Leading me to go into the school year shot, overworked, and depressed.

This summer I had the urge to get two jobs again…that being said, that's just the workaholic in me...

I forced myself to just stick to one and pick up some babysitting jobs on the side when I could.

And after it being only a few weeks of summer and still working 5 days a week I still feel myself able to have a life without wishing to not wake up the next day and go back to a job where I wanna poke my eyeballs out.

Doing this allows me to be able to balance the other things I want in my life this summer too

- my friendships and hanging out with people - not being too tired

- also my self-care because im not so tired all the time

- Being able to run without being so drained- leading me to actually reach my goals

This balance and more free time give me the opportunity to do more with my life and have a bit of flexibility for my routine to change. For instance, if I didn't run in the morning last year I just wouldn't run because of going from one job to the next

Socializing:

I think I have realized that I've been becoming an introverted extrovert.

But I also need to have the balance and ability to be able to say no to plans for the sake of myself too.

There are some days when you just had a rough day at work and are exhausted and really just wanna chill and put on a movie in your bed.

but also sometimes you need that little push to actually go and do stuff with friends.

Through balance im able to have the ability to socialize when I feel like it and for that matter it's definitely more than last summer.

One thing that has been helping with this is making smaller plans to look forward to

so far this summer some of the fun things that were planned:

Taylor Swift's Eras Tour concert

Noah Kahan concert with my sisters

Colorado trip - to see Jaxon :)

Fiona hopefully coming to visit <3

Lumineers concert in August

& also small things that me and my friends just decided we want to do.

The easy coffee date/ ice cream date!

It doesn't take that much effort or energy to get coffee with friends to catch up or ice cream to just get out of the house for an hour or two.

Trying to run with some of my old teammates!

... instead of running alone

or maybe ask Someone to bike with me while I run.

Balance is overall a key to living and maintaining a fulfilling life. I do not want my life to be consumed by one thing only, so learning and finding the tools to create a more

a balanced lifestyle accompanied by all the categories that make me who I am and what I want out of my life is the key to that.

An unbalanced life is what I saw and experienced last summer which lead to

burnout physically and mentally.

Summer is the perfect time to start to try living a more balanced life to translate this into the rest of my year as well, as much as I can.

Then again though, everyone lives their lives differently so my definition of a balanced lifestyle may differ from yours, and in no means does this mean my way is wrong or yours is right. everyone has a different version of fulfillment but that again goes to say how beautiful life is because no one's version of fulfillment and balance is mirrored.