Adventures in Self-Care: Carving out Space
Summer in higher education is a beautiful thing. For many of us, the pace of direct service slows down, we shift into project and preparation mode, and summer Fridays begin (workdays ending at 1pm). I'm lucky to get this extra time to slow down, center, reconnect. But lately I've been thinking about the anxious feeling I get whenever someone says "August." That burst of Orientation activity, the month that will fly by with an extra helping of overtime and very little "me time." Last year, August saw me in my first full-time job. I shifted from being a student with multiple part time jobs to working one more-than-full-time gig and teaching two classes. At the start of July, I'd just begun a new relationship. Not only was I juggling more work hours than I was used to, I was also learning how to make consistent space for a romantic partner, something I hadn't done since high school. It was a joy, a surprise, a pleasure—and it was so very new to me...