The last few weeks have been hard. I've struggled to find a balance between work and school and workouts and life.


Starbucks and my planner...how I survive my days

One of my classes this semester is really tough and very time-consuming. At work, I'm in the middle of a couple of high-priority, tight-deadline projects.



My stress levels are up to the point where I can feel knots growing on knots in my back and my workout time has been diminishing to make time for class and homework.

I was talking to my friend Zac about it the other day. He also works a high stress, highly demanding job, but if you spend time with him, you'd hardly know it. So I asked him what his secret was.


Zac's the one in the hat, looking all happy and not stressed

He told me part of it was having a good poker face. The other part was his daily gym session.

And then he offered a good piece of advice. He told me that when I felt like I was reaching the point of a stress meltdown to just stop what I was doing, put on my running shoes and immediately head out the door. Even if it was just for 10 minutes.

I'd come back and be able to tackle the problem in a more calm frame of mind.

Turns out my friends are smart people.

So today, when I felt like I was beating my head against a wall on a project, I stopped. Ran into my room, grabbed my shoes and put them on.



Then I downloaded some Taylor Swift to my phone, synced my new fancy Red Fox wireless headphones and headed out the door for a run rocking out to T.Swift.

A side note about the headphones: Red Fox sent me these bad boys to test out and review and after a few runs I'm pretty obsessed with them. They're wireless which means no stupid headphone cord to get tangled in on runs. They sync via Bluetooth to your phone and they have little controls on the sides that let you adjust the volume or switch songs without having to mess with your phone during the run.



At first I was a little worried they would be too big and bop up and down on my head, but they don't at all. They stay in place really nicely, and did I mention how nice that whole lack of a tangled cord is?


Look no cord!

Now I just need to update the music on my phone so I have some better tunes to jam to.

The run was on the shorter side, but it was just what I needed. Plus Taylor reminding me to Shake it Off was blasting loud and clear through the headphones. I came home feeling a little bit calmer and was able to tackle a few items on the ol' to-do list with a bit more focus.

I still need to work on finding a better balance between everything and making sure I carve out time for my runs. Because as I've learned the past few weeks, when they just get dropped from my schedule it benefits absolutely no one.