About Work-School-Life Balance

A year ago these days, I could only wonder in a mixture of awe and slight disbelief about a friend of mine who’s juggling life as a student by day and employee by evening. How does he manage to do that? Some people could only offer “because it’s him” kind of answer, which obviously still leave me in curiosity. Will I be able to do that too?

Today, after three months of being one myself, I can finally comprehend the bittersweet of it. It is indeed uneasy to describe that when someone asks how am I doing, I’d just go with long “hmmm” while nodding continuously. But when I ask myself how am I doing, here’s what I actually wanna remember.

Being a full-time student and full-time employee while still trying to play my roles as a daughter, a sister, a friend, and also having enough me-time, is a lot more than just hard work and time management.

Yes, first and foremost it’s so much about staying up late. It’s about working whatever I can do whenever and wherever I can do it. It’s about making the most of my idle time: while waiting for train, the bus-ride home, the ojek-ride to office and whatnot. Sometimes, it’s just harder to be mindful because I can’t avoid to think about work in class, and about assignments in office. It’s also about forgetting TV series, not having current favorite song because I have no time to stop and listen carefully, postponing errands until I reaaally have to do it, forcing myself to take smaller part in group works than I used to simply because I can’t have it all, caring less about perfection because I can only afford completion, and being extra selective in which things I need to put A-level work. 

But most of the time, it provides opportunities to learn about myself better, about what’s most important to me, about the things I would put first, about the people I would make time for. It’s about pushing myself further, then finding out that I’m so much stronger than I knew. It’s about going through it one day at a time, ticking off my to-do list one thing at a time. It’s about finding joy in simple little things, squeezing fun in the middle of mundane things. It’s about appreciating the beauty of now. 

It’s about enjoying life as it is. One thing I’m really grateful for is the fact that there is never a single second I regret my decision to walk down this path. It’s hard, I got to admit, and there are times when I just feel so tired. But if I have only one word to describe this, I’d choose ‘challenging’ instead of ‘exhausting’. It’s energy-draining because it’s exciting. In short, this is what I want to say to my future self when she finds it harder to hang in there: you got this!

Cheers!

P.S. Sometimes, it’s also about finding myself writing this kind of stuff instead of facing the upcoming deadline of 4 assignments in the next 3 days.