By Roland Bjerke
Have you ever wanted to just drop everything and only do what you want to do for the rest of your life? Well, I want you to know that you can do things you don’t like and still live life to the fullest. I know that you might not want to have to do your job or clean your room, but all it takes is balancing your time. I used to be the biggest worry bug about school and sports, but now I’ve laid off the worrying. Why? Because I balance my time. As quoted by Tommy Bolin, “If you’re not having fun, it’s not worth doing.” The biggest obstacles are the things we don’t like doing.
The biggest obstacle that you have to overcome are the things that happen in your day-to-day life that get in the way of doing the things that you like. For example, one way to counteract doing something you don’t like is putting on music. That’s what my mom does when she does dishes. She sets up her ipad and listens to music, so she is not bored. If you are in any extracurricular activities either through or outside of school, it takes up a lot of time, and sometimes it gets to be a lot. Go to school, go to practice, go to work, do your homework, and go to bed. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades all blur into one. But the thing is, if you really like what you’re doing and you do a lot of it, that is living life to the fullest. Some people think that extracurriculars are time consuming and boring. So if you don’t like them, then don’t do them. That leaves time for you to do what you like so you can live life to the fullest.
A great example of someone who lives life to its fullest is my Grandma Jane. She is a party animal. Everything she does is for other people. Like if I text her something that I need, she will leave work and be there in a second to pick me up or bring me something. Even between work and everything she does for her family and everyone, she still lives life to the fullest and has as much fun as she can. Why? Because she balances her time. So how do people balance their time? By making a schedule!
If you want to live life to the fullest, then you are going to need a way to balance your time. Making a schedule or calendar to organize your tasks and activities is one of the most important ways to balance your time.There are a few different calendars and organizational tools that you can use. For example, if you are the type of person that needs a pen and piece of paper to remember things, a paper calendar is for you. If you want to be able to take the calendar out of your pocket to look at it whenever you want, then maybe you’d like a google calendar. These are both great ways to organize your time.
If you really want to change how you are living, then you are responsible for the amount of effort you put in to balance your time. You are the one who has to change what and how you are balancing your time in order to find happiness in your day to day life. You can ask others for help, but remember that they have a life going on too, so if they can’t help then it’s not their fault. Clean your room, do your chores, do your work. Life is so much easier when you stay ahead of the game. When you put things off you think you’re doing what makes you happy by avoiding the things that you don’t like. The problem is that those things don’t go away, they just follow you around. Everyone at some point in their life has been up at ten o’clock at night doing some project or work that should have been done in the previous days. That is not a good feeling. Often the idea of completing a task is much worse than actually just getting to work and doing the task. This comes right back to time management and enjoying life. If you do the things you have to do, you can do the things you want to do.
Keep in mind this quote by Eleanor Roosevelt, “The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.” Not only will you want to try new things, but you will feel better mentally and physically. You will have a lot more free time to do the things that you love doing.
Putting things off causes stress. Without a plan and a schedule you’ll always feel anxious about what’s coming next. You’ll never feel like you have enough time. Creating a schedule can help you gain more free time to do the things you love to do. Finding the balance between work and play is the key to happiness. Everyone deserves to live life to the fullest. Managing your time can help you do that. Technology is a great way to help manage your time so you can live life to the fullest. Every single phone has a calendar on it. It doesn’t take long to plop some information on the calendar to balance your time. All you need to do is take a little time out of your day, so in the future you will have more time to do what you love. None of us know what tomorrow will bring, so live each day to the fullest by finding joy in everything you do.
Roland Bjerke is a Spring Grove High School student, one of 10 area students participating in the Journal Writing Project, now in its 27th year.
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