What it means to take care of yourself

After a long year of studying UX Design, it was finally the time to build my portfolio. What an exciting moment that I had been waiting for? Even the reality of wearing a hoodie and a pair of glasses in a room that has old and newly made coffee around, that was the moment I had waited for a long time!

As people said it’s better to build a portfolio on a code based website, so then, I started creating Div Blocks one after another. After a few days, there were generations of generations of Div block families, and I didn’t even know which one to click in order to make a small spacing change.

I said to myself, “okay, let’s give myself a week of time.”

Of course, in this busy season, I needed to take care of myself.

Taking care of myself with coffee? yes! Taking care of myself by taking a break with browsing reels on social media? yes.

Not being able to sleep at night, so then I give myself more coffee to stay up to work? yes. Spending too much time on my phone when my spouse is right next to me? yes.

The point I wanted to ask my self was… “Am I taking care of myself when I am going through this wonderful time that I have been waiting so long, or am I mentally torturing myself by numbing the moments because I am so stressed out to make things as I was imagining?

I would say I was the later one. A week seem like a short period of time, but it’s enough to make your body weak if you don’t eat well and also to make your mind as spicy as your stomach with raw garlics.

After a week and a half, when I couldn’t still figure out the PERFECT portfolio setting, it was the meeting time with my Mentor, James.

He is my fourth mentor I have met during my design course. Each mentor had been wonderful, and I should say I have been blessed with them.

Anyways, as soon as I started my google meeting with him, I started telling him what wasn’t enough and what didn’t go well for building my portfolio— just like confessing my sin to a priest.

“Hey, so for a week, I tried really hard, BUT Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Suspendisse varius enim in eros elementum tristique. Duis cursus, mi quis viverra ornare, eros dolor interdum nulla, ut commodo diam libero vitae erat. Aenean faucibus nibh et justo cursus id rutrum lorem imperdiet. Nunc ut sem vitae risus tristique posuere.”

He listened to me and said, “Haley. I don’t think it’s bad. Also, the mistakes that you think they are, I don’t think they are.”

“Really?”

After that, it wasn’t about what went wrong anymore, but it was about how I can improve based on my present work.

Then, I asked him how he separates his own personal life and work life. He said, “Try to have your own time for an hour every morning before you check your email or social media. Then think about how your day should be and what you need to do! Just like cleaning your house.”

He added,

“It‘s for you to be productive and be 100% for what you do — whether it’s your personal life or work life.”

How are you? Look around yourself. Are you prioritizing what matters to you? Of course, I also agree that focusing on what you do so hard to make your dreams come true is very important, but not to the point where you can’t be productive and start losing true WHY you are doing what you do.

I think sometimes it’s easy to be blinded because of not enjoying the moments we wanted so bad. At this point, it won’t be easy to satisfy yourself with what you do.

Again, how are you doing?

I ended my call with James by saying, “I will go ahead a make a cup of coffee for myself.” Not 4 shots to wake myself up, but only one this time to enjoy the scent of it.