What is Relaxing?

I can, with absolute certainty, tell you that I have never owned a hoodie that wasn't an "athletic" hoodie and was only worn inside, around family, or occasionally for a late night Target run where we were the only people in the store with a few Canadian stragglers. The only way to sum up my decision to clearly not be comfortable was that it just wasn't my style. But honestly, what isn't more my style than a black sweatshirt material hoodie with "good vibes" embroidered onto it in a pretty white font? 

This post isn't about my wardrobe though, well not really. We're talking about my inability to properly feel relaxed or chilled out. You ever feel like you can't turn your brain off no matter how hard you try? That's where I'm at and where I've been for...a while.

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Much like most things in my life, my relationship with relaxing is...complicated. I can watch half a season of Gilmore Girls in one day without any problem. While that, in theory, is relaxing because I'd be on the couch all day, it doesn't actually feel relaxing because I have to multitask. It's like...part of my being. I have to be doing two things at once or else I can't concentrate. That really doesn't make any sense, but it's how I function. So a relaxing act becomes...not relaxing because I need to be writing blog posts or doing something productive to counteract the relaxing. 

I can't even relax on a beach. Actually, there's something you guys need to know about me. I actually hate the beach. I hate water, sand, getting sand in unmentionable areas of my body, sweating when I'm not even doing something active, must I continue? I can spend maybe one day at a beach, sometimes two if I brought good enough books. But by the third day of a beach vacation, I am ready to go home. I feel like I could almost guarantee that a relaxing tropical vacation would make me feel more stressed out than my day to day life.

Part of the reason I wanted to try out Headspace this year (full disclosure, I have not even opened nor thought about the app since I wrote that post until right this moment) was to help clear my mind and relax every once in a while. There's a little push and pull in my brain, something that tells me to "Chill the hell out you weird old ball of stress" and something else that truthfully is just an extremely long series of exclamation points. I think you can guess which side always wins...

I have always been fairly busy. Between school (I had to be the best at school, I didn't half-ass that) and sports, I had stuff going on almost constantly. Then in college that sort of dropped off in the sports category, so I had to fudge some stuff to make sure I stayed the same amount of busy, for some strange reason. Heaven forbid I have free time to detox after classes. And then as my classes started to get easier and I got ahold of the whole college thing, I still wouldn't give myself a chance to truly, truly relax. Instead, I'd do what I mentioned earlier: multi-task but convince myself that I was "chilling." 

A real 2018 intention of mine should have been to learn how to relax more. I don't think it's as easy as finding an on/off switch for my brain, but just learning to live with and accept the fact that I don't have to be doing multiple things at the same time in order to feel like I'm doing something. Doing nothing every once in a while sounds like it'd be good for the ol' soul. My stress breakouts are also nodding and saying that that sounds like a good idea too. 

Sweatshirt: Zara

Pants: Levi's

Jacket:  Target

Boots: Madden Girl

Sunglasses: Quay

Bag: Saint Laurent