Take Care Of Yourself
(Maisie Peters)
The last few weeks have been learning experiences for me. Or rather, they’ve been opportunities to practice what I’ve learned in the past, I suppose.
I’m extremely busy right now. Anyone who’s known me for a while knows that this is not unusual. It’s a personality flaw that has been here since like…middle school, at least. But it feels a little unusual this time and I’m not entirely sure why.
Maybe it’s the lack of structure around the chaos — as a full-time freelancer, it’s all on my own terms and by my own schedule. Maybe it’s the sheer number of projects. Maybe it’s about the timing of it all. I don’t operate on a standard 9-5 schedule anymore. Tutoring takes up practically my whole weekend every week and usually a few weeknights too.
I don’t have days off built into my life anymore. I have to find those on my own. Prioritizing time for myself is hard for me in the best of times. I want to always say yes, whether it’s work-related or social, and any free time I have tends to be a happy accident. When it has to do with work, I like what I do and I like to be good at it. I’m a people-pleaser. So when I see an email or a Slack message come in, I want to answer it quickly, to be a good responsive producer.
It became pretty clear to me pretty early in this new chapter that that constant accessibility wasn’t going to work. If I tutor from 9 to 5 on Saturday and 8:30 to 5:30 on Sunday, then launch straight into five days of being online and working for all of my other projects… That will not go well for me. Or for anyone who has the misfortune of being close to me, emotionally or physically.
I think a past version of me would have tested this limit and I’m proud of myself that I now know better. I’ve started carving out one day in the middle of the week, usually Wednesday or Thursday, to be my day off. I’m writing this now from my couch on Wednesday afternoon and it is currently my “weekend”. I stayed in bed until 11:30am and only got up to go get my bangs trimmed, then sat at one of my favorite coffee shops and worked on my novel with an oat milk chocolate chai for a few hours.
Because it’s fully a work day for everyone else, I have emails and messages coming in all day. Once, I might have felt the urge to respond immediately. If I managed to not respond, I might have still let the guilt and fear of letting people down eat away at me and spoil my day off. But I’ve gotten so much better at that now. I probably will read the email, just in case it’s urgent, and flag it for later. Sometimes I’ll respond and say something like: “Sounds good, I’ll get into this tomorrow!” This brushes away my guilt and anxiety, but also frees me up to actually relax today.
It’s not a perfect system. There weren’t actually any days this week that I could take completely off, so I do have to drive to the suburbs tonight for one tutoring session. I’m still juggling a lot right now — four podcasts in development, one weekly editing assignment, one monthly episode production, tutoring nearly 20 students plus four group classes, organizing the silent auction and raffle for the Tzedek fundraiser next month, and trying to write a novel with the support of the Novel-In-A-Year program. And I have books to read and TV shows to watch and legislators to call and yell at!
But I’m figuring it out! I’m learning how to say no to projects and carve out time intentionally to rest and read and write and have collage nights with my friends and lie in bed all morning and just be a person.
Speaking of collage nights… I’m really into collaging right now. I’ve made three now — one for me and one each for two of my main characters. All three are included below!
Here’s my first one and my favorite. I think it’s a pretty good visualization of how I feel on the inside:
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