Self

Essay by Lawson S

Re-entry into a more tranquil state of being, or “self care” as it has come to be known, is the mere ability to recognize one’s own thought process needing a rest. It’s important to talk about self care, when it becomes too much, when you need more of it, and how to properly utilize it to take total charge of your busy and hectic everyday life on this big blue globe and home of ours we call Earth.

To fully understand just how important the act of self care can be, let’s dive into a fictional scenario:

You might be currently attending the Annual General Meeting and it’s your turn to speak, but for some reason you made it out of the house with a severe lack of coffee in your system. Your colleagues and shareholders take note of your abnormal behavior. Well, the reason you are so tired is because you were up until four am checking up on all your emails and doing general housekeeping before the meeting tomorrow. You forgot to take any sort of break. There is no iota of self care in this. While you may be focusing on the care of the corporation, and possibly your co-workers, you forgo your personal life and own dignity to do so. But for some reason you’re fine with this. Maybe it’s the six digit paycheck, or some of the crazy business excursions. Whatever it is, you don’t care about yourself and this much is true. You need help. Desperately.

Now on the other end of this seldom-complicated spectrum we have the cruiser, the lazy one in the group only willing to the bare minimum, like freshly cut cookie dough that never actually turns into the real thing — you’re there but work-bare. So, it’s time for you to pitch a new product to the innovative product portfolio consideration team on Monday. You found out one month prior to the presentation just so you could fully prepare and present with your all. Well it’s almost Sunday and you’ve barely touched the ball — and your whole team is running—- but for what? You’re not running and you’re supposed to be the “team captain” — the head presenter. Because you have a couple of other individuals helping out with the presentation of the potential product. You’ve done nothing, in fact you should probably get no credit but Stacy from product innovation has been once again just too kind and let you take almost all of her work’s credit. You were never really present for the presentation meetings. Why is this? You were taking a “hiatus for self care needs” in Bora Bora with your partner for essentially three weeks. This leaves you with one week and some change to be present. You’re not though—too focused on the broken light fixture at home, your aunt just broke her leg and you need to visit her at the hospital—-all very valid but where’s your work? It’s not there, mainly because you don’t want it to be. You

conceive these delusional situations and use them to your advantage to get out of work. Self care or self tear?