Mini Life Update & Thoughts on Living in The Present
The last two weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind. Exactly two Thursday’s ago, ago I had a friend come visit, she stayed with me for four days, and then I packed up my entire apartment of three years, within the span of three days, and moved into my new place with my boyfriend over this past long weekend.
Before my friend arrived, I had been dreading those two weeks. I thought I wouldn't be able to enjoy my time with her because I’d be worried about packing, and then I thought I would just be completely freaking out after she left since the timeframe was so short and I would be too frazzled to pack properly and remember everything.
Obviously, I survived, and I recognized three pretty important things during that time.
I really do thrive on being busy. Even though I had all of these big priorities, I still found time to squeeze in extra tasks like redoing my internet, or getting an international driver’s license. Not everybody is like this, but for me, having a lot to do means I get even more done because I like to optimize. I’m going to target to pick up extra packing tape? Why not stop at AAA and pick up my international driver’s license. I need to return a shirt? Let’s go to the cleaners on my way back. This jam packed type schedule is not sustainable over long periods but for those times where everything seems to happen at the same time, it’s very useful.
Every day during the past two weeks has had such a clear overarching priority. While my friend was here, the priority was spending time with her. I went out to lunch with her during the work day, stayed out all day on the weekend, and generally did whatever I could to make sure she had a good time. No chores or other tasks took precedence. Once she left, the clear priority was packing. Every day after work, I had assigned myself sections of my apartment to pack up. After that, I had a couple more social events like my sister’s birthday party that had priority, and then the following days were about moving and unpacking. It’s usually extraordinarily rare that I feel I have one singular priority for my day. They typically are cluttered with a lot of small tasks that are competing for attention. I liked having something so clear to work towards and it’s made me think about how to create more of those types of priorities for myself rather than small, or neutral ones.
Although I thought the moving weekend would be stressful, it ended up feeling like a weird mini vacation. It did take place over a long weekend, but each day on that weekend was additionally spent almost entirely doing something new. On Friday, I helped my boyfriend move. On Saturday, I went to my sister’s party all day and met new people in a new location. On Sunday, I moved into a new space, and went to a new restaurant. And on Monday, I continued to do new things as part of the moving in process. This caused the weekend to feel much longer and more satisfying than normal. It’s actually been proven that experiencing new things makes time feel like it’s passing slower which is why a vacation to a new country feels long whereas your typical brunch weekend feels like it races by.
All of these factors allowed me to live in the present - Something I have a notoriously difficult time doing. And it was much easier than I thought it would be. The past two weeks made me realize that I frequently clutter my days up with small tasks in the interest of ‘getting it all done’ when in reality it would be much better for me to batch smaller, less important tasks and give myself the space to have fewer, but clearer priorities for each day. I will start with defining my overarching priorities for the next couple months and work backwards from there to define top priorities on a weekly and daily basis. I’m interested to see if I can carry this feeling through since doing this when there were external factors like a friend visit or movers is one thing, but simply imposing it on myself will be quite another.
A new installation at the Art Institute that looks how I feel inside