Hello Everyone,

Welcome to The Invisible Vision Project’s Blog.

Today’s blog post, as you can probably tell from the title, it’s about self-care. But, before I begin, I want to mention, I am not an expert on self-care, and in fact, I think I’m pretty bad at it. However, I’m also just beginning to learn the importance of self care, and I hope to share that with you today.

We live in a world where there’s always a lot going on. Whether you are a student or someone who is working full time, there’s always a lot of ‘deadlines’ to meet. And, even when we are not studying or working, we often get distracted by other events/things around us-visiting family/friends, socializing, attending extra events/meetings, etc. The list is endless…

In the midst of all the things around us, have you ever thought to yourself: “What about me?” “What am I going to do for myself today?”  Well, the sad truth is, sometimes, we get way too busy and those thoughts often get pushed to the back of our minds, and be forgotten. But, this isn’t to say we don’t care about ourselves. At least for most of us, we know that self-care is important but, because a lot of us are busy human beings, we simply forget to self-care, and that’s really not a smart thing to do.

I’m going to speak for myself here. If there’s one thing I’ve been doing for quite sometime and that has to be the fact I’ve been in school for a very long time, I’ve been a life-long learner and I really enjoy it. To be exact, I’ve been in school for 21 years, and that’s really a long time if you think about it. And, it’s probably because I’ve been in school for such a long time, I also started to practice self-care less and less-especially in the recent years of my life, when life’s been hectically busy!

But, it’s also in the recent years of my life, I have been having more issues and struggles with my health and well-being. Even though, I’ve been performing fairly well at school (academically) and have been quite involved on campus and in the community. But, if I put a “grade” on my health, I’m probably falling and failing.

Especially, since the start of this academic year, I sort of anticipated how the year will go, mostly based on my previous years’ experiences. I already knew that it’s not going to be an easy year, but I’m also almost getting used to the challenges. But, what’s different for this year from other years is that, even though I took a relatively less course load, I picked up a quite large commitment. Although, I’m enjoying what I do in this commitment and in my other work but, it’s been very exhausting, physically as well as emotionally. And, I can’t tell you how many times and to how many people I’ve told that I just wanted to give up. But, I didn’t, and I won’t.

Knowing that I won’t resign from school, and commitment and my own work, and I also became very aware of the fact I was terribly exhausted, and burned out. And it’s just the mid-term season. I came up with one solution, it may not be perfect, it probably won’t fix everything but it’s definitely something I haven’t done for a very long time. I made a brave decision to take some time off from everything-from school, from commitment and from work. So I did that and it happened between October 20th-29th, 2018 (a 10 day long break!).

During this time away, I made another decision to not respond to anything school or work related. And I even told people to not contact me unless it’s emergency. During this time, I spent less time on my phone and on social media. I was only focusing on myself, without any interference. And more importantly, I took the opportunity to do more medical investigations.

So, all there is to say is: it’s OK to take breaks sometimes, it’s absolutely OK and necessary to practice self-care. Some of you who’re working full-time and have been for a very long time probably will understand this: you don’t want to take time off because you’ve come a long way to get to where you are and, you probably still got a long way to go. But my friends, you can’t go further (as you like) if you don’t allow your terribly exhausted body to rest once in a while. Self-care is not selfish. Self-care is necessary and it’s for your own good. After all, no one is responsible for your body and your health, other than yourself.

Finally, I will conclude with this quote I posted on my Facebook Page: “Don’t let life take a permanent stop too soon. Instead, take temporary stops when necessary.”

This concludes today’s blog. Thank you for reading to the end. I hope you had some good take away from reading this blog!

By: The Invisible Vision Project