I am a performer, a people pleaser and an achiever.

These elements have been central to my identity my whole life and I don’t know myself without these characteristics.

But sometimes performing, pleasing and achieving gets exhausting.  Sometimes, they weigh you down.  Sometimes, you just want to be, to breathe, to trust yourself that if something doesn’t get done today, it will get done tomorrow.

I’m working on this, and part of working on it is the very hard task of lowering (often unrealistic) standards (to be multiple places at once, to have all my papers graded in 24 hours with extensive feedback, to turn around letters of recommendation in an hour, to be all things to all people), making space on my calendar and in my day for myself, and taking that space and time to breathe rather than filling it immediately with the never ending list of things that has to get done.

It’s probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

I don’t have much else to say about that, but I just thought you’d want to know.