As I am writing this on the first snow day of the year, I realized that I have not had any time to truly do things for myself. Today was the first day in about a month or two I woke up after 8 a.m. I even got out of bed at noon, which is something that I never do, due to the amount of work I have to do at Starbucks every morning because of my hectic schedule of classes.

I always mention to my stressed friends that they should always create time for themselves to wind down. Clearly, I am not taking my own advice. I find that creating time for myself is a lot harder said than done.

In fact, it is so hard that I haven’t had time for myself since October. That’s approximately 5 months of constant work and no relaxation.

I understand that it is hard to wind down when there are so many things going on at once in your own life, or even in your own mind. Everything is fast-paced and it seems like your work is the one that is leading or even dragging you, not the other way around (the way it should be).

Especially with less than two months left of this school year, all the teachers have been assigning papers and some of us are still talking midterms. In no time, we will be in that finals grind and getting our bags packed and ready to go back home. This time crunch will definitely prohibit us from relaxing or even having 5 minutes to ourselves. So why don’t we start winding down now?

Because I have noticed my lack of self-care, I started using a meditation app before going to sleep every night. This app, Calm, provides many options for meditation: Focus, Calming, Winding down, Sleeping, etc… These meditation practices are only 10 minutes long, so it is not that much time taken out of your day. Perhaps 10 minutes is not enough to truly consider it as taking time for yourself, but for me, it has been a good start.

Another aspect I found that helps with self-care is being proactive. The earlier you do your work, the less time you have to dwindle about it, and the more you get done. This is probably very obvious to most people, but I am the type of person who always stresses out about deadlines, and continues to stress out about it until the very last minute, having to rush through actually doing the assignment or studying for the exam.

With all of this being said, I truly encourage you to spend these cold winter days (that should be spring days by now) having a couple cups of tea, reading a nice book, or using meditation to wind down from the chaos we live with every single day. Maybe by winding down now, you will be more prepared for the time crunch that will present itself during finals week.