Learning How To Relax (Kinda)

 As a person who tends to constantly be busy doing something, I have recently come to the realization that my reason for being busy constantly is that I have seen from a very early age that to not be busy is to unproductive and lazy.

I am working towards finding a balance between working and relaxing and below are a few things I've discovered that help me relax:

Practicing Meditation on a Daily Basis

In an effort to begin my day in a more positive way, I've begun to use the free Soothing Pod app every morning. I love this app because the meditations are short and because meditations are grouped by similar topics. Soothing Pod app also offers other things such as bedtime stories, music and sounds to help the user relax. 

Writing hotel gym reviews on Hotel Gym Rater.com website

As someone who exercises daily, hotel gyms have been a godsent as me and hubby get settled into our new life in southern California. Since I post my daily workout on Instagram, I was surprised when I was contacted by a gym named Christian from Denmark regarding his new website rating hotel gyms.

Since this sort of thing is right up my alley, I created a profile and have already submitted a hotel gym review for the place where we're currently staying. By writing reviews whenever we stay at a hotel, this helps me to help others know where the best hotel gyms are as well as ones to stay away from.

Engage in more body inclusive workouts

As I wrote earlier, I exercise daily and I do a combination of using exercise equipment (when available) and YouTube workouts. My new favorite YouTube workout channel (as well as website and free app) is Joyn which provides body inclusive workouts. So far, I've enjoyed a workout using a pillow (called pillow fight) as well as a 90's dance workout. I love Joyn because the workout instructors a plus size and are moving the bodies that they have now versus waiting until they hit a number on the scale. Seeing the instructors on Joyn help me to accept the body I have now as well as learn that I don't need to exercise for a long duration each day to improve me fitness. 

Continue with goal of completing two reading challenges

As I mentioned earlier this year, I am currently particpating in two online reading challenges: the 2021 Popsugar Reading Challenge and the 52 Book Club's 2021 Reading Challenge. So far, I've completed 20/50 books for the Popsugar Reading Challenge and 20/52 books for The 52 Book club's 2021 Reading Challenge. You can follow my on Instagram to see what books I've read for each of the  challenges.

Relaxing by journaling

I have kept a journal since I was in middle school and have often used my journal as a way to express feelings and emotions I don't feel comfortable speaking aloud. Although there have been time periods when I have stopped regularly journaling, as life has changed due to COVID-19 as well as me leaving my old job and starting a new job, I have resumed journaling and find that it helps provide clarity and insight on my feelings. Currently I also use my journal as a way to clear my mind after work or word out situations occurring in my life presently or in the future. 

Learn to not work when not at work (and during lunch breaks)

One of the hardest things for me to do is to disconnect from work and not work on my off days. At my last job, since I was the digital services librarian, at a small rural library system, I felt like I was on call and never got a chance to rest when our buildings closed due to COVID in  March 2020 which lead to a higher number of usage of our ematerials (eaudiobooks, eBooks, streaming video, etc.) Due the building closures, my boss was texting me constantly with things to post that she found from other library Facebook account she follows online.

Eventually, I started to have daily anxiety towards words regarding having to create, edit and delete content on a daily basis for six Facebook pages, one Twitter page, and one YouTube channel. In addition to my digital librarian job duties, I was also branch supervisor for two library branches as well as project lead for our Zip Books program and our Career Online High School program. If this sounds like a lot, that's because it was a lot. 

Having been at my new job for almost a month, I can say that my anxiety less is much less and I feel this is due to it being a different library set up with two locations ( 1 building and 1 bookmobile) and that fact that the staff at my new job are super chill. I'm slowly but surely learning to be less regimented and less in a rush and more go with the flow which I'm starting to see is not necessarily a bad thing. 

Although learning to relax is something that doesn't come naturally to me, I feel that the more effort I make on a daily basis to relax, the easier it will become.