I've always been the type of person who wants to make the most of life. The type of person who would want to exhaust all of the days in a week, the hours in a day, just to feel like I was able to do everything I could possibly do. I make endless lists of things I want to do, to accomplish; I set a lot of goals, I google events and new places to go to, and in between all these things I try to set some time aside for planning.

This has become the regular pattern since last year, when I was starting to get accustomed to my working life. My weeks would go: weekdays working, weekends meeting up with people for lunches or dinners, visiting events, exploring places. Some days I would have some alone time in a cafe, but still engrossed in planning, still trying to find new ways to fill my time with. Weekends I barely stay in the dorm where I live. I leave Friday night with a bag of clothes, and stay at various friend's houses, or my boyfriend's, and Sunday night my room and I are reunited again and then it's a night's sleep until the start of the next week's grind.

A lot of my friends tell me, they're amazed that I am able to keep this lifestyle up. Don't I ever get tired? Or maybe, lazy? Lazy to go out and instead just spend the day in, lie in bed for the most part, do mundane things, maybe household chores while watching a movie on one's laptop. Since I rarely have those free days I try to squeeze those things in during the weekday, or maybe a Friday night or Saturday morning before I go out. 

Aside from this kind of lifestyle being hard on one's wallet, I have to admit that it really has taken its toll on my health, most likely. 

January came to a close last Sunday. It was a blur, the fastest January I've had in these 22 years. Work was busy, as well as my social life. My health started going downhill during Week 2-3 of January. I was out very early for some days and had to go on site. I was feeling sick that week and was just sleeping when I came home, I had no energy to do anything else. I also got diarrhoea, which is never a good thing. I also got a fever. But I had to keep working, then come weekends I would meet people and go out again. Then the following week, I developed UTI symptoms, but ignored them thinking it was nothing. Until Thursday night last week when I had a sharp pain on my lower right side that wouldn't go away. 

I realized I had to get it checked, so I went to the clinic on Friday. I was diagnosed with UTI and given antibiotics to drink. I still went out that weekend to meet friends and my boyfriend. Sunday night I felt the sharp pain again, and now here I am day two of sick leave. Day one was spent waiting for the doctor, getting an ultrasound and spending a lot of money for being sick.

So what is the hard lesson that I learned? 

That sometimes you just need to slow down.

I get the feeling sometimes that I don't have enough time, that I always need to rush. 

And I think that's also one reason why I keep moving so quickly, why I try to squeeze everything in.

My boyfriend like's to tell me that a lot too, that I need to slow down and just breathe. But I've gotten used to this lifestyle quite a bit, and to be honest it's hard for me to stop because I get that feeling of not having enough time and not doing enough recurrently.

But, with this little episode I've understood that it really is important to slow down. For your body, for your health. Without your health then you wouldn't be able to do anything that you want to do anyhow. But also, it's important to slow down so life doesn't become a blur, and that you yourself does not blur with it.

It's a bit hypocritical of me to say this, because I feel as if I've let things blur past me without really giving myself some little tidbits of the days to take it in and recalibrate. My brother told me the other day that he doesn't have time to think because there's so much to do. And I answered that there's always time to think and slow down, and that it's a necessary step in accomplishing all that we want to do. Who would've guessed the words would come back to haunt me.

Take your time, slow down, breathe. 

I felt the joy of just sitting down and taking my time, when, I did exactly just that today, sitting in the dorm cafe just taking my time, not worrying about anything, not trying to process a thousand thoughts all at once. 

Quiet moments have a beauty all to themselves.

Hopefully, starting now, I can allow myself to take in more of those quiet moments, and steadily quiet the voices that keep telling me to rush in my head. 

Hoping you all have a little time for those quiet moments as well.