Summer of Self Care

Well, I've made it through the tough slog that is the end of the school year.  Writing exams, photocopying the exams and assembling them into packages; getting through the last quizzes, tests, labs and projects; marking these last items and those other things that I've been avoiding for awhile; and wrapping up extracurricular activities.

Now all exams have been written by students, marked by me, marks have been entered and report cards are done.  I'm sitting in a hallway by the window doing my last official duty of the school year: monitoring the third floor during exams (so far so good).

Next week will be a flurry of cleaning up, meetings, parties, etc.  I'll be able to sleep in some days and the pace will not be hectic.

Before I know it, it'll be two months of freedom.  And I know what I need to do with it: take care of myself.

This year I let my worst habits get ahold of me.  I let work take over, and I let my exercise habits and food habits slide.  I ate junk food, drank too much to unwind, and stopped bringing my gym stuff to school, promising myself that I'd go home, and then go to the gym.  That would never happen because I would stay at work too late and then use that as an excuse.

I know that during the summer I need to make myself a schedule.  I want to wake up early, and get a good workout done in the morning.  I would like to give myself one household chore to each day (declutter a box, clean out a shelf, etc.), and then after that read, watch Netflix, be crafty, go to a different neighbourhood etc, cook something healthy, whatever.

I have a couple of small trips planned and I think that's all I want.  After years of big summer trips every year, I just want to chill.  I have a baseball road trip to Detroit, five days in Vegas and that's it. I want to take a couple of small road trips to visit friends and family but I want to be a homebody for two months.

I want to get back to running.

I want to eat lots of fruits and veggies, but also try a milkshake at this burger place that my friend's been raving about.

I want to go out less.  Is that crazy?

I want to do away with things that aren't working for me.

I just want to take better care of myself.