I'm a big proponent of life lessons. Recently I've been discovering that the ones my mother has been trying to tell me for most of my life, to which I never listened, hold a lot of merit.
This one can be easily summed up in the old saying "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
We all have our moments of overloading ourselves with work and it's not healthy. I have been more than guilty of this on many occasions.
The last semester of my senior year of high school I got a full-time job. For about two months straight I did nothing but work and go to school. My mother harped on me the entire time that I needed to go out and have fun, especially after I actually considered leaving my own graduation party to go into work.
I repeated this process my sophomore year of college, but this time it was school and a bad relationship.
Finally I realized that if you wrap yourself up in being serious all the time, you'll never actually have a chance to live.
It took me a good two years to have an epiphany on something my mother had been telling me all along.
If you don't take a break every once in a while you'll make yourself too high-strung and become a bit of a curmudgeon--nobody likes a curmudgeon.
Sometimes you really just need to let yourself breathe. Work is important. School is important. However so is your sanity.
Too much work will wear you down. I'm not suggesting abandoning all responsibility and partying all the time. Get stuff done and reach your goals, but don't work yourself to the bone, because life is about moderation and finding the right balance.
So the next time you notice you've logged countless hours studying in the library remember to lighten up and let yourself out and have a little fun for a change.
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