Yikes, I haven’t had the time or energy to blog in days!

Not that I’m all important, but one has to stay in the habit.

College is still going well, but this second week I hit burnout. I just did not want to be there and be carrying around my heavy backpack. Though one of my teacher says I can leave the course book at home and just use paper if I want, and since I’m already carrying a notebook that’s one less extra thing. Yay!

I am spending two thirds of my day or more at campus, so burnout is bound to happen. I’m not used to being around strangers, in class, or walking all over that much. It’s a lot to get used to.

But I couldn’t figure out why the day after I was so exhausted. I felt more tired the next day than I did while I was actually there. (Comment if this happens to you too. Am I alone in this?)

Of course my muscles hurt from all the extra weight and it’s hard on your shoulders to have backpack straps sitting on them so much. But this tiredness was deeper than that. You can have sore muscles and still be energetic.

I was tired inside. And not because my brain was overwhelmed, though that might be a small part of it, but because I’m emotionally exhausted.

I can endure a lot when I’m at ease. I’m not a super athletic person (to understate the case) but I’m tougher than I look. I’ve walked miles and managed not to keel over. Which is pathetic compared to what people used to have to walk, but I’m not in practice.

Maybe a lot for me is a little for someone else. Certainly the older adults in my life don’t think much of my difficulties. Soldier on, they would say. Of course I’m more active than some of them, but hey, one is over seventy years old.

My mom is the one who amazes me. She’s always busy. If she’s not working her own job, she’s working with my dad, or running errands for him. When she is home she’s doing laundry or finances, or helping with schoolwork. (Not mine of course, wink.) Etc. You can fill in the rest.

Me? I try to do a few things. But I don’t have to do most of them. Maybe that’s why I don’t.

Yet, it isn’t exactly fair to compare myself to my mom. She’s had decades of experience. I’ve had a couple years of even knowing how to do most things, and a few months of even having a Driver’s License.

I heard today that Millennials (Me) and Gen X-ers, ( who ought to be calling themselves X-men if you ask me,) are the most stressed people in the country. I think Millennials are twenty to thirty year olds, or slightly younger, and Gen X are their parents or older siblings. I’m not sure, it’s always changing. Let’s just say people under 40 or 50. You’d think it’s be middle-aged folks, wouldn’t you? But they are more established.

And get this, if you live with family, parents especially, who are stressed out a lot, you can pick it up from them. even if you have nothing personally to be stressed over.

Which totally explains why I had a terrible time when I was younger with feeling anxious, even though I had an “easy” life.

Actually work or no work doesn’t make your life easier. Sometimes people from very messed up backgrounds go on to lead very productive lives. And some of them aren’t stressed out constantly either. Often that’s because of their faith, but there’s a few cases where it’s not. For whatever reason, those children make a different choice and grow up to be better people then their parents

And then there’s the rest of us who seem to be more influenced by our parents then we could ever imagine. Even if our parent’s were good to us, they weren’t always good to each other or to people outside our family. That has an effect on us.

And it ties in to my college experience, your job, your hobbies, our families, etc.

The reason being around so many strangers stresses me out is because I’ve grown up hearing strangers are dangerous. Which is sadly true so much of the time. Yet it’s not often the people who are cautious about strangers who get attacked by them, funny how that works.

Maybe I also just don’t know how to handle people very well. I never have. Even though I can be friendly enough to them, it’s not the same as having true social grace.

But do you know what? I’ve had the curse of no social skills spoken over me for years. Even before I even has a real chance to test mine. I’ve been told I wouldn’t make friends, I wouldn’t know how, I would upset people if I acted a certain way. Before I ever acted that way with my target friend group.

And now I struggle with feeling socially confident. Oh, bit shocker there. It’s a self fulfilling prophecy.

Now, I can wallow in this, or I can work through this. I choose to believe that I can learn social skills. I just need practice, perception, and patience. I’ve also learned that some people will overlook your lack of social grace because they know they struggle with it too.

Which is, by the way, not something anyone every bothered to tell me when they warned me about how I would fail.

People do forgive you. Not all of them, but some will. Stick with those ones, they’re better friends anyway.

That’s all for this post, but I’ll be keeping you updated as I expect to learn a lot from this experience. Until next time–Natasha.