It’s been a while since my last post. I could sit here and tell you about how busy I’ve been, how much stress I’ve been under with COVID-19 and the end of semester grind and worrying about moving back home. I wish I could tell you all of that, but the truth is, while all of that stuff has indeed been going on, I haven’t actually been all that busy. I haven’t been all that stressed. I’ve actually been feeling pretty great. Better than I’ve felt in actual years. In truth, the reason I haven’t been posting is because I’ve been putting more effort into self-care, and that I haven’t figured out how to balance it with schoolwork.

In one of my earlier posts, I talked about how I wasn’t great at self-care. I mentioned that I was trying to implement certain things like meditation and regular walks. I mentioned that I had several things that I wanted to do, wanted to implement, but didn’t know how. In the time since, I’ve figured out how. You just do it. The trick is that it might come at the cost of something else, and in my case it has been school and schoolwork.

Let me be clear. It’s not like I’m dropping school entirely. I’m here writing this for school. I still write my papers. But I’ve spent the majority of my life placing school as my top priority. Anything else I had came second, and everything else suffered as a result. I got results from that way of working. I don’t want to brag, but I’ve kept up a 4.0 GPA my entire time at Rowan University. I’ve been seriously dedicated to school, and I by no means want to drop it entirely. But as I said in my Self Care post, there are so many other things I want to do that I haven’t felt capable of doing because I only ever had one priority.

I refuse to sustain that. If I had to pick one thing that isolation has taught me, it is self-forgiveness. It’s an ability that I have almost completely lacked up to this point, despite friends and therapists and professors telling me that I should exercise it, that I deserved it. I never listened until now, until quarantine. Self-forgiveness, in my experience, functions the same way regular forgiveness does. When you mess up, you apologize to yourself, not just by regretting your shortcomings but by providing some way to make up for it. And then, you make it up to yourself and are forgiven.

I’ve had pretty severe issues maintaining motivation for schoolwork since quarantine started. It’s been a perfect storm of being stuck in a relaxed, non-professional environment, being isolated with no one around to truly hold me accountable, run-of-the-mill senioritis, and an overall dissatisfaction with the way I’ve been feeling mentally and where I am with my passions. It’s as though some switch has flipped in me, that I’ve reached some sort of breaking point. The fact of the matter is I’m tired of school. I’m tired of not doing the things that I want to do. And with “graduation” so close, all I can see is my coming freedom. I’m finally going to have time to do all the things I’ve wanted to do, that I’ve been neglecting.

Admittedly, this may not be the greatest tactic for succeeding in school. That’s where the self-forgiveness has come in. I have learned to trust myself. I’ve got a hell of a track record behind me, and even in times where I’m not motivated to get work done, where I procrastinate or struggle, I know that I not only come through it, but excel in doing so. Even with the chaos currently in my life, I have no reason to think that this will change. I trust that I will get done what I need to get done, and that even if I don’t do it to my absurd, perfectionist standards it will be good enough and won’t make too much of a dent in the progress I’ve previously made. I’ve never been a “C’s get degrees” kind of guy, but there comes a time where you have to put your foot down and say “I’m not going to torture myself”. I’m done torturing myself over grades that won’t matter to me ten years from now, especially when I know I can still do well enough to get by, if not better.

So I’ve found a new motivation. I’m forgiving myself, rebuilding my self-esteem, working to pursue my personal interests and hobbies, and looking forward to my future. I’m looking ahead. The future has always scared me, but I’ve been getting excited knowing that I will soon be able to work on my future without restriction. Hell, I’m already starting to. This new motivation might be exacerbating my issues with staying motivated for school, but I’ll be totally honest, I’m not sure how much I care. What’s one more obstacle? I know I can still get things done, and I trust that my work will ultimately be good enough. And if my energy is going to productive activities, to good things that will improve my life and mental health in the long run, then the hit to my school motivation is something I’m absolutely willing to forgive.