BUILDING BRIDGES

Back to school. The three words I've been dreading for some 2 months where I had no care in the world until I came home. And with open arms, I was welcomed by reality and was gifted my mountain pile of holiday homework I needed to complete within 2 weeks.

Those two weeks flew by in a blur and next thing you know reality welcomes me with another gift...

VCE.

For those who are fortunate to not know what VCE is, it's a system where students take subjects in their 2 last years of school that count towards their ATAR, a number which defines the courses and universities a student gets accepted into.

So your girl has been studying her butt off for that amongst balancing other things like mY NEW JOB! I'm not going to be so broke anymore haha.

Even though I'm no chemistry student, I definitely know that the reactants VCE + a new job + life in general produces difficulty sleeping + being physically and mentally tired + and having no time for myself.

Surprisingly though, I haven't been a victim of all these products. Although there are days when I'm having a little bit of trouble sleeping, and being tired from work and school, I still find time for homework and myself. And thinking about how I was going to juggle everything in bed one night, I found that this week, I have found ways to slow down and destress productively.

Now I know what you might be thinking. There's no way the words 'destress' and 'productive' can be next to each other; de-stressing involves eating chocolate and/or ice cream, catching up on the latest episodes of your favourite TV show, etc.

But now it can.

This week alone I have found better ways to relax and eventually build a bridge over some issues rather than eating ice cream all day (okay I still eat ice cream... I just can't resist the $1 sundaes at McDonalds).

1. Jamming and Dancing

Whether you dance at a studio or at home where no one's watching, you cannot deny that after having a jam to some music and dancing along you feel amazing - like yEs girl! bring out that inner Beyoncé! Now I shall take out some knowledge from my brain that my kinda-useless-and-made-me-not-like-science teacher taught me, when you do some sort of physical activity - like dancing - your brain releases endorphins which is the "happy hormone". So after your little dance session, you're in a more positive mood and prepared to take on whatever life throws at you.

(personally, I've been loving Fergalicious and last night when I was home alone I had a lil jam myself)

2. Face Mask (ft. one of my many meme-mask-faces)

#selfcare A face mask is much more than that. I'm sure many of you have had one and can agree that it's very relaxing. And even though most of us don't know if the mask is doing anything good for our skin, regardless you feel better about yourself and more productive (at least I do hehe). And during those 10-20 minutes (or however long you need to keep the mask on) I usually find myself organising, cleaning or doing some other task so I'm really killing two birds with one stone - even better!

3. Reading

I could bring out my public speaking speech about reading and the benefits but let's just say that reading is very enjoyable and improves one's academic and social abilities. I find that the best time to read is at the end of the day after I put on some lavender oil and my ballad on repeat - the atmosphere is very calm and relaxing so my brain isn't very active and I'm able to ease into a nice sleep (I'm being serious - this week I've had some of the best sleeps of my entire life).

So whatever life is currently throwing at you, I hope you've found your own ways to be like Po from Kung Fu Panda and pull out some really cool moves to defeat the evil like I have!