What do you do for you?

by Joey | Feb 23, 2016 | Throwback | 17 comments

I was starting to lose myself. It was happening quietly. Slowly. Little by little. A yes here. A yes there. And before I knew it, I was gone. The parts I loved about myself, the parts I loved about my life, I’d stopped making the time for. I was too busy.

I spend all of my time doing for others. I don’t say that selflessly. It’s just the way my life has been set up, and that’s okay. I’m a people serving kind of person, I always have been, I hope I always am.

But there’s a balance in a life like that, there has to be. Boundaries are set for good reason. The things I kept sacred, protected, I stopped making a priority. The more full my days became, the less I felt like myself.

When that happens, it’s hard to pinpoint why exactly you don’t feel right. It’s shocking how sly life is, creeping in, sucking away your identity leaving you feeling lost and empty. I didn’t know what was wrong.

I made vegetable soup last week because I wanted it. And on Saturday night, I got it in my head to make an old pasta dish that J and I used to love. Two hours into the process, J finally asked. Why are you cooking again? We could have just gone out. I didn’t have an answer. I just wanted to.

Then on Sunday, I made the time to get back into the gym. I came home and ate the pasta I’d made the night before, followed by a bowl of the soup I’d made.

I felt like myself. I felt happy and satisfied. Content. And it was then that it hit me. I stopped making time for those things. They seemed unnecessary in the business of my life, so they got cut. It seemed harmless enough, but it turns out prepping meals for my little family in my little kitchen is important to me.

I let life get to the point that the things I used to enjoy became chores. That was my fault. I let life get that way.

That’s not okay. That’s never okay. You wouldn’t let someone else down like that, would you? You wouldn’t nix something from your daily todo that someone else was relying on you for. At least if you’re anything like me, you wouldn’t. So why was it acceptable for me to eliminate all of the things that made me happy? Because I stopped putting myself first. I’d stopped putting myself second. I’d stopped considering myself at all.

It’s no wonder that everything started to feel like work. I stopped treating myself like a person.

It’s hard to balance, I’ll admit. I work a full-time job balancing someone else’s life, and I chase dreams full-time. And there’s nothing wrong with that. But the second I stop treating myself like a person is the second it all becomes wrong.

So I ask you this. What do you do for you? What makes you feel like a person? What causes you to sit down at the end of the day and breathe a happy, contented sigh of relief?

For me? That’s cooking. It’s keeping my little apartment looking like a home. It’s smashing it at the gym. Sometimes it’s putting in my earbuds and coloring, letting my creativity float around. It’s journaling; it’s reading. It’s writing. It’s taking an hour to myself in the morning with my coffee and youtube.