My mom tells me constantly, “You can’t do it all.”
She’s been saying this to me for years — slow down, take care of yourself, some things will have to wait.
Of course, hearing her voice say these things comforts me, but often when I get off the phone with her, the to-do lists catch my eye again, and I’m back to thinking I have to get everything done within the next day. It’s hard to let go and let myself go to sleep.
I feel different than who I was in high school; I tried to do everything back then. From prom committee to track to student council, each activity was an addition to my resume with one goal in my mind: get into good universities.
Now that I’m here, I still feel the pressure to be impressive, but something in my mind clicked. You don’t have to do activities you don’t like anymore just to get to the “next step.”
But then there’s the question of the next step. Where do I go once I’m not here anymore? Am I doing enough to ensure I could even get “there” if I wanted to? Should I join another organization, divvying up my time further to look more impressive? If I didn’t like a class in high school, I never was brave enough to switch out of it.
That was who I was back then, doing things I didn’t really care about and paying the price, which was ultimately getting burned out. Throughout my semesters at UNC, I’ve given myself time and tried out different extracurriculars, and given myself the wiggle room to leave if I didn’t like one. If I have a bad feeling about a class on the first day, I’ll find one that gets me excited to learn instead of dreading class each day.
There is an art to letting go, of saying to yourself, “I don’t want to do this.”
One of the best quotes from my favorite show “Girls” is when Hannah’s friends ask her to go on a hike but she decides instead to stay by the car. She says, “It’s very liberating to say no to shit you hate.” It’s hard to say no, but then again, I’ve found myself getting involved in things I never wanted to be a part of in the first place.
