The Burnt Out Millennial

 

"Do what you LOVE and you N E V E R work a day in your life." That's what they say right? Now I don't know about all of that because I work the majority of my between content creation and freelance photography and while most day are filled with joy and I love it and am always grateful to be able to have the opportunity to be creative and figure out what I want to do with my life; trust me, it's still work. In fact, I don't know if I've ever worked harder and often times for little or NO monetary compensation.

 

This is something that's been on my mind as of late. Seeing so many people in my social network post about how they need beaks from social media and how they feel so much better and so much more productive when they're not on it got me wondering...is social media actually toxic or can we create an online social media experience that makes us feel seen, heard and most importantly, safe. 

Of course the research shows that we benefit from being out in nature. It goes back to our ancestral roots and is innately in us to thrive when we spend our time outdoors. And as someone who loves to hike, bike, jog, kayak, swim and anything else outdoors, I can attest that there is no feeling quite like having the sun warm your face and breathe in the fresh air. It just, heals the soul.

With everything that is going on in the world around us I wanted to take a moment to reflect and encourage those of you reading this to just, pause. The world of course has always been spinning around us with so much going on, places to go, people to see, chores to be done. But now it feels that over the past few months the world has seemingly stopped spinning, and as a Nation we have all been on pause.

Photo credit @bruthadave

I suppose the main purpose of this post is to sort of do my best to describe my experience navigating growing up in my formative years not really identifying as black or white. While not every bi-racial person may experience this, it seems that many of us do. And I feel it’s important to open our societies eyes about how others may be navigating their place in the world in hopes that we can all be a little kinder to one another.

Photo Courtesy Healthline

Photo Courtesy Getty Images/ TIME

With the newly-found amount of free available to us during this quarantine, I have no doubt many of you may be asking, “What the heck do I do now that every minute of my day isn’t packed??!” Well, don’t worry; I’ve got you covered! In this post I wanted to offer a few suggestions (all free or relatively cheap).

With the Coronavirus having the majority of us working from home not only does this pose the challenge of learning to be productive and accomplish getting your work done in a whole new environment but also adapting to the idea of sharing what was previously just a living space now turned into a work space with your partner. How do we navigate this? Below I have a few suggestions on how to deal with this situation and keep you from wanting to kill the other person!

So it’s clear by now that we are living in unprecedented times; So how do we cope with our new ‘normal’? We’re working from home, spending WAY more time around our partners than we ever could have anticipated and are having limited social interactions. So how does all of this affect our mental health? This is certainly something I’ve been thinking about over the past week or so as we been social distancing and as a society trying to figure out how to move forward in these strange times.

As we find ourselves in unprecedented times and stuck inside our houses for an extended period of time I wanted to offer a list of things I've been watching in hopes that it will get you through this very strange time and hopefully keep you from killing your significant other. Enjoy and stay safe and healthy guys!

I wanted to hop on the blog real quick here to write a complimentary piece to one my recent podcast episodes where I give some book recommendations. I know for myself, it's nice sometimes to have a visual component to go along with the content I cover on the podcast. So here we go!

Guys, first off thank you so so much for your kind words and responses to my most recent posts where I opened up about my anxiety. It means so much and continues to prove that we're not alone in our struggles, so again, thank you. Now, I'm excited to continue to share things I'm passionate about, whether it be film, television, art, food or books. So I return you to your regularly scheduled 'Reality by Rach' programming with a roundup of some upcoming movies and shows I'm looking forward to. Hope you enjoy! And, as always, thanks for getting your 'dose of reality'.

In my final post in my series on tackling anxiety I wanted to open up about my experience with therapy. So let me back up a little here. After losing both my parents within a few years of one another I didn't realize all the feelings I was harboring and that were bubbling beneath the surface not being dealt with. And to be honest it took me a long time to even come around to the idea of therapy. Honestly, the stigma around it made me feel like going meant that something was 'wrong' with me. But now, thankfully, I know that's not the case and want to encourage those who are on the fence about going to therapy to do so.

Mornings can be tough to get a handle on especially if you're not a morning person, like myself! But one realization I've made over the past few years is how vital a morning routine is to helping with my anxiety as it sets the tone for the rest of my day!

So I wanted to take some time out and share a few things that I do to get the day started off on the right foot and hope you find some of this helpful!

One of the things I've been working on over the past few years is finding ways to cope with my anxiety. Honestly, I've probably always been a little anxious, even as a kid. But that definitely got worse after dealing with some traumatic events in my life.

After a year or two of just kind of sitting with this feeling or drowning it out by over boozing at social outings or burying myself in work I wanted to find a healthier way to cope.

Something I've wanted to address on the blog for a while now are a lot of the myths and some of the truths surrounding Millennials. And while I'm more at the tail end of this demographic, being in my almost mid-thirties, I felt the need to speak up and shine a light on some of the things we're doing right but also call us out and talk about some of things we're doing very, very wrong.

"Let's go for a run" is a phrase you'd absolutely 100% never hear me say! I hated - no, what's stronger than hate - loathed running. So you can imagine the shock of those around me -and honestly, I think I even shocked myself-when I signed up for the Pittsburgh Half-Marathon. 

 I played soccer growing up and while I enjoyed the short sprints up and down the field, running a long distance was something that never crossed my mind to do -  and it is certainly not something that seemed enjoyable. So, when I met my now-husband in college and found out (once I was already too far into the relationship to turn back) that he ran 5K's and 10K's for fun, I found this information mind boggling. After cheering him on at a few races, he finally convinced me to run a 5k with him. I begrudgingly agreed and with minimal training set off one foot after the other to run my first race. Things were going great until after I crossed the finish line and ended up having an "athletic" induced asthma attack! I was 40 pounds overweight at the time and thankfully, after a few minutes, my lungs stopped turning on me and finally let some air in.