coping with academic chaos @ university (barely) + balancing intentional habits

Good morning! I literally woke up a few hours ago, I spent a few hours scrolling on my phone and this is something I've been doing quite often recently and it does lead me to like feel bad about myself when I'm not productive and I have tried very much to disconnect like productivity from my self-worth but I think at this point it's not a productivity thing, it's literally just behaviours and actions that I have and do that don't make me feel good anyway and so feeling bad I think is just a sign like I need to change how I'm living. This might seem so random because I've not really been posting very consistently and that is also something that makes me feel very bad and lots of just like complicated feelings about it like I feel sometimes very uncomfortable with the idea of sharing my thoughts and my life on the internet, it feels kind of invasive and uncomfortable for me but then I also really love to share with other people who are going through the same things and so it is a very back and forth thing in my mind like not knowing where I stand and how I feel and that stops me from doing stuff quite often. I tend to overthink and even though I do think I've come a long way of not overthinking as much and becoming more confident, I definitely still do overthink and don't notice I'm doing it, I tend to just accept it but yeah I'm filming now because I just sent my friend like three 10 minute voice notes about how I've been feeling just really defeated recently and how I don't recognize myself and the way I'm behaving and the way I'm feeling. It feels so bad and there's been a lot of things that I think I've lost that have kind of made me feel like not myself, not the person I feel most comfortable with and what I mean by that is I think we are made up of our habits and our behaviors, not just your personality or your thoughts or your past. I think the way you choose to live every day makes up yourself and I think especially this year in the last six months I've lost a lot of parts of myself that I used to hold very dearly and really kind of associate myself with like I think oh I love to read, I love to make videos, I love to journal like I know I do deep down I used to write pages and pages every day and it would make me feel so good and I haven't journaled in months and every time I do it's like a one-time thing. I film it maybe or I write a few prompts down but then I feel like I'm not really connecting to it, it feels like I'm just doing it to say I've done it not because I'm actually interested in it or looking to get something from it. Same with exercise, same with like working hard at university, same with sleeping well, eating well, keeping a tidy environment. I feel like I keep aimlessly stumbling around doing things once or twice and trying to get like instant gratification from it when really I just need to change my lifestyle and my behavior and my attitude towards living. So yeah this might seem like such a random video or like a random talk to start a video with because I'm like haven't really been posting, haven't really shared anything that's going on in my life but yeah I think I'm just gonna try and make a change. It's not like I feel super motivated and I want to film this and put it on the internet and like inspire, I just think there's literally no way I'm gonna do stuff unless I'm holding myself a bit accountable for it so here we are. I haven't actually finished writing in my journal, in fact I'm probably not even halfway but perhaps in more of like a symbolic way I feel like I should go and get a new journal and move from there and just like forget about all the rest and move on because I feel like I am still contemplating a bit on what I've done so far this year and not what I could do in the next six months. So yeah that's literally all my thoughts, it's raining, it's Thursday, I'm meant to go to the lab today, to the office and probably get some work done but I woke up this morning and I just felt like once I get up I have to start my day and go out and do stuff and that just felt unbearable so it's just a sign for me that I need to reflect a bit and take some time to actually think. I find that recently even if I don't have plans in the evening, I most of the time don't have anything to do in the evening after uni but I find that my energy now that I can devote to things is so much less than it once was, it's like it's dwindled down and I've stopped giving myself to more things. I don't know how to explain it but now when I get home I don't want to commit to going out and seeing my friends or going on a run or like going to the cinema even, I just need to stay here and not think and just like relax for hours and hours before I go to bed but it's not something that recharges me, it doesn't actually make me feel any better and then the hours pass so quickly and then it's the morning again and I don't feel like I've actually rested at all so yeah I think I just want to slowly just reintroduce things to my life and not try and be perfect all the time, not try and have everything perfect all at once, like eating really well, going to the gym, doing all my work on time, posting on my youtube every week, like I don't need everything at once to be how I want it to be but I have to take steps to get that otherwise I literally never will so yeah those are my thoughts, I'm gonna go now I think and buy a journal, I was planning to go to the gym now but maybe I should buy my journal first to make sure I actually do it and yeah we're gonna go in the rain together and have hopefully a nice time but if it's not then that's okay, that'll be a reason yeah okay let's try our best so please pardon the rain noises, I have the windows open because it's not rained properly in a while and I feel like it's kind of clearing the air, I find that the pollution really hangs low in Manchester, the air feels quite dense and sometimes a good rain is what it takes to clear it all away it's so fresh coming through the windows with all the rain so I'm letting all the fresh air in but I have this drawer in my dresser that always breaks the bottom always comes out and it's such a mess, this was like this when I moved in but I don't really know how else to fix it other than to continuously put it back together, I just did this a couple days ago and it already broke again so it's annoying but I'm gonna have to figure it out okay I've got one side in, this side's down and now I need to get it in the bracket and then fold it this way and get it in this bracket good as new, kind of you may think that the emptiness of a quiet mind is unappealing or unproductive but it's creatively rich, loaded with potential when it feels at all restless filming stuff every day I have been pretty much sticking to, not like my new routine I would say because it's not a routine it's just like a plethora of things I'm trying to do to help myself live a better and happier life so I have been eating way better, I find just trying to eat like literally more simple foods, yogurt and I'm eating a lot of potatoes which I really love just cutting them up, roasting them and eating them and it's so delicious so yeah eating better, I've also been meditating daily and also been doing Pilates daily, I have a lot of issues with back pain and so for me Pilates kind of helps my posture a lot and helps me not have kind of this chronic stiffness and I've also been going on little daily walks, I think I- I vlogged mine this morning when I went to walk by the canal and I saw lots of geese and I also saw swans and their little babies and I can't remember what they're called, came back did some editing and had my lunch I'm having a bit of a later start this morning because I don't have to be in the lab until the afternoon and then I have to stay there for a few hours and after dinner time, I've kind of just let myself relax a bit um but yeah just like keeping my environment tidy, getting back to journaling, I'm still yet to like fully begin the artist's way, I'm still working through like understanding all of the toolkit and the artist's dates and stuff like that but I'm very excited, I think next week I'm going to fully begin like the 12-week course and you know try and stick to it before I do fully start it, I'm going to introduce like the morning pages and see how it feels because I am in a very bad habit still if I wake up at like 7am and then I go straight on my phone and it's not like I'm getting loads of texts and emails and stuff overnight so there's really no need for me to immediately be like checking my whatsapp, my emails, like my instagram dms like I don't have a reason to be doing that at 7 in the morning so yeah just kind of think that's my next step, managing that, I think the way I start my day really affects me for the rest of it, kind of sets the tone and so getting off that damn phone will be really good um but yeah other than that I'm obviously feeling a bit more grounded, I am not feeling so full of inflammation and I think that is a term that gets thrown around very much these days, people go on about cortisol and people go on about hormones and inflammation and stuff, like misinformation gets spread on the internet so fast these days and it's usually like health gurus on instagram telling you to like drink greens powder versus just eating some spinach, anyway yeah so I'm just trying to go back to like whole foods because I find that when I eat kind of takeaways and stuff I get a lot of water retention and it's quite painful so that's what I'm trying to avoid. Regarding anxiety because I go through, sometimes I have a day where I'm just so anxious like I feel it so strongly and deeply and it's like it will never end and it's like I've never had a calm moment in my life, that's how strong it feels um and although they are much less frequent than before I still get them at times and one thing I've noticed is getting better just after a few days of being more mindful with my habits is I am able to now separate more my personal life and my personal goals and mood and stuff like that from my work and become a bit more objective, I think something that I've developed over the last few months and I've matured in is not taking criticism and I say that lightly like not everything is criticism if it's just general feedback or advice, I think it's very easy when you lack confidence and like self-worth to take things personally when it's literally nothing personal against you, it's just advice, it's just saying, it's just hearing someone say that you could have done something a bit different and it all it almost feels like a personal attack or that's how it kind of used to feel for me and so going into meetings and stuff I'd be really anxious and worried that people would get upset with me and although I knew like no one's gonna shout at me, no one's gonna tell me I'm doing stuff like really bad, I was nervous of that and dreaded it whereas now it's just a part of my day and it doesn't kind of threaten me as much like sometimes people just have suggestions or a different way of doing something and want to like be more collaborative and that doesn't mean they have something against you, like it's not personal and it is very strange because I used to find this more in my personal life where I'd have some people I felt like I couldn't talk to honestly because they would get very offended and take things really personally even if it was setting a completely normal boundary and they might overreact and get angry and act like I'm asking something absolutely ridiculous of them. I notice in my personal life when that happens when somebody is taking offense when they don't need to and taking things personally however I wasn't able to recognize that I'm also doing that in like a professional environment and being afraid of feedback and always anxious and always trying to like make the best absolute best work just in case I get like a negative comment it's like I couldn't handle criticism so yeah I'm just finding that I'm being a bit better about being a bit more relaxed it's not that serious like it really it's never that serious you know and I'm kind of also letting go of trying to be the best at things like why do you need to be the best at something to enjoy it or be good at it or to have fun with it how did I get that in my head I wonder I don't know but yeah that's all I have to say for now gotta go to uni but so far so good I'm feeling a lot of positive changes have taken place and are taking place from kind of just being more mindful in my everyday life and I don't think it's just my actions that are making me feel better I think it's consciously knowing that I'm putting an effort in makes me feel more reassured that it will be okay even if I was getting no comfort from meditating and doing pilates and eating better just the knowledge that I am putting that effort in makes me feel good so take this as your sign if you've kind of fallen out with a routine or something that helps you like go back to it and see the joy it brings and remind yourself of that okay let's go