Balancing Extremes

When considering how I should be spending my time, I always struggle with the idea of balance. Since the beginning of my time at WashU, I have struggled with allocating my time. I have multiple commitments that I wish I could spend more time on, and this isn’t unique to me. Many college students and hard-working people in general have things they wish they had more time for. Personally, I find that I often am having too much fun and not working hard enough or working way too hard and not having any fun. The obvious answer to this issue: balance. Yeah, sure. It would probably be healthy to make time for both. So far, though, this method doesn’t seem to work for me. I am never satisfied when my life is balanced. When I’m making time for a social life, focusing on school, going to the gym, keeping to my diet, and working hard on Campus Creamery, I should feel great, but I don’t. When my life is balanced, I don’t feel satisfied. I feel like I’m just mulling along, and that’s always a concern of mine. I need to have agency over my own life, or else everything feels like it’s on fast forward. When I really lean into my social life, I become really happy and feel like I’m making good use of my short time in college, but I feel guilty that I’m not working hard enough on the creamery. On the other end of the spectrum, when I’m working really hard on the creamery, I feel like I’m pursuing my dreams, and nothing can stop me (a great feeling). Pretty quickly, though, I start to feel like I’m missing out on some of the best years of my life and an opportunity to let loose and have fun before I have all different kinds of things to worry about later in life. When I’m at one of the extremes, I feel the best about what I spend my time on, and the worst about what I’m missing out on. If I’m somewhere in the middle, I feel like I’m not spending enough time on anything, and I start to feel like I’m wasting my time. So, I naturally end up gravitating towards one of the extremes, and that continues in what seems to be a never-ending cycle. So, what am I supposed to do? Some say find the right balance. Some say I don’t need to work so hard, and I should be enjoying myself in college. Some say just take it day by day. I know one thing for sure about this stage of my life: I don’t need to know the answer yet. The day-by-day route is really the only option if I don’t know the correct answer yet, so as long as I continue to be conscious about how I spend my time and what makes me happy, I think I’ll figure it out. Until then, I’ll be doing my thing.