Gooooood morning people! First of all, I wanted to thank you guys for your sweet comments on my very first vlog. It was kind of fun, so you can be expecting a few more of those to pop up around here! I always like to put a voice with a face when I’m reading blogs. And more often that not, that voice is NOT what I expected it to sound like! Does that ever happen to y’all?

This morning I wanted to touch on something that has been consuming my life recently – multitasking. In light of starting school again, with 12 hours of class and 16 hours of practicum a week, plus MANY hours of homework, I find myself occasionally longing for the leisurely hours of last year. Did I mention that working from home was pretty sweet? Yeah, that really was the life…

But my days are much busier now. I haul about 20 pounds of stuff to school, or to work, and then haul it home again in the evening.

Then it’s homework time. And dinner time. And occasionally workout time, if I didn’t squeeze one in in the morning/it isn’t a rest day. And then it’s evening TV time/blog time/email time/GoogleReader time…you get the picture.

Long-story-short, time is a precious commodity around here these days. So I like to try and squeeze every little bit of productivity out of it that I can! What can I say – I have always worked best under pressure. In college, I frequently didn’t start things until the night before they were due!

But is all of this multitasking taking away from simply living in the moment? Sure, a little bit of productivity and efficiency every now and then is a good thing. Multitasking is a critical skill for a graduate student! I just don’t want it to overtake my life, to the point where I forget to stop and take care of myself.

Being healthy is about more than working out and eating right – it is also about mental health! We have been talking a lot about self-care as social workers, but self-care is something that we can all use a little bit more of. Don’t become so busy that you can’t take some minutes out of every day to just BREATHE and BE STILL!

This is clearly easier said than done, but I’m making it my goal for these next two years to practice good self-care. Without it, there is no way that I can become an effective social worker! Moral of the story? Less multi-tasking. More self-care. It’s something that we can all get onboard with.

Do you ever struggle with doing too much? Classic case of the American way, huh?