Cara Blackhall
What happened to the six-week (seven-week if we were lucky) summer holiday that we had when we were in school? The stress-free, ice cream-packed, and water-fight-obsessed summers were not appreciated enough by me back then.
How can it be that when you’re in further education, you’re given around three months for your summer, but it still isn’t enough time for what you may need to do? That’s how I am feeling right now, and it’s completely different to how I wanted to be feeling when I set out my summer goals in June. So, let me talk you through the mistakes that I made going into my final university summer.
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Money doesn’t matter, just have fun.
I went into Summer with the mentality that money is temporary, and memories are forever, but it wasn’t a realistic mindset to have all the time. There is only so much fun you can have without starting to worry about how much money you have left in the bank.
The amount of financial pressure I have put on myself this summer is ludicrous. Instead of worrying about what I can’t do with my money, I should have focused on what I can do with the money I have.
Budgeting was the way forward for me. Budgeting, saving, and prioritising. I didn’t need to be doing something every second of every day, honestly little and often worked for me. I realised this halfway through.
2. Setting out goals that could potentially be unrealistic.
Walking 10,000 steps is surprisingly challenging, but apparently, in June, I thought it was going to be simple.
Time goes by so fast; days fly by throughout summer and when a day finished, and I hadn’t completed all my goals, I would be so disappointed. However, I urge you to remember that not every day is going to be perfect – I certainly know that now.
I really should have taken every day as it comes instead of beating myself up for not ticking everything off my to-do list.
3. Constantly thinking about how close I am too going back to reality.
When I finished university for summer back in May, it felt like summer was going to last forever. The idea of having four full months to myself was bliss, but it goes so fast.
Halfway through July, all I started to think about was how close September was getting and how close I was to going back to reality. This worried me a lot. The idea of deadlines, structure and early mornings again really took away from me allowing myself to just truly enjoy my summer.
This is the only time I will say that my boyfriend and best friends were right. I really should have appreciated the break and tried not to be so hard on myself.
4. Falling out of the routine of journaling and setting daily goals.
If you could see my goals for 2022, then you would see that journaling every single day was one of them. It really was going so well, until a lot of the days in my summer became one (or at least felt like it) and I lost my routine.
I never should have stopped.
Even if the only thing I did on Tuesday was brush my teeth, I still should have written down that I needed to do that at 8 am and 9 pm, because following a structure brings organisation and a sense of pride that you are making progress throughout your day.
5. Focusing too much on a nine-to-five routine and not making the most of a five-to-nine routine.
This mistake was found through TikTok. Once I saw what other people were doing with their after-work routines, I soon realised that I don’t need to just have a productive day, a productive night is a great thing too.
I guess it brings my whole point about setting unrealistic goals back, as I should have realised that I can also complete my goals at night-time too.
It doesn’t need to be work, dinner and bed, as tempting as it was most nights.
If you can take anything from this article, let it be that there is no way that summer should be. There is no way you need to be to make the most out of your summer either. The key word here is pressure; we put too much pressure on ourselves, and because it was my final summer as a student, the pressure reached an all-time high.
If I’ve learned anything too, it’s that I am doing the best I can. We need to stop putting so much pressure on life and enjoy it for what it is and for who we are.
Featured image courtesy of Photo by Robert Bye on Unsplash. Image license found here. No changes were made to this image.
