A deep breath

Life doesn’t stop. That’s been painfully obvious to me lately. Filling the mid-year break with other courses was good in the sense that I got some course requirements out of the way, but it’s bad in the sense that I never got a chance to take a break.

On top of that, requirements have just been popping up all over the place: financial forms, working with children checks, course readings, applications. It’s hard not to feel overwhelmed by all of it, like there’s just too much to get through. Paralysed.

I just don’t know what to do about a feeling I have that I’m being ground to pieces by a careless machine of bureaucracy that doesn’t know how to show empathy, let alone be productive. There are things I do that I don’t even want to do, things that seem to serve no purpose whatsoever. Why do we have to live in a world of forms instead of action? At the moment, most of my work seems to actually translate into impacting the world... 

I think I’ve been struggling with feelings that I’m not sufficient, and the world wouldn’t know what to do with me even if I was. It’s hard to be coming to the end of a degree and still not know what’s coming next. I really don’t like that I have so many small obligations instead of a single job to dedicate my time to.

In the midst of all of this, I found that it was helpful to remind myself to stop for a little while and just listen. Breathe in, breathe out and stop running down the rabbit holes of negative thinking. Roll my shoulders around a little bit and try and loosen up my body posture a little bit. Remind myself that all I can do is tackle life one step at a time.