Monday, April 6, 2009

cleanliness is next to .... calmness?

Not to sound too smarmy, but sometimes what I really need is just to spend a few minutes cleaning up my apartment.

I've always been a person who, under stress, makes a huge mess in my surroundings: papers laid everywhere, clothing strewn about, coffee mugs left out, etc. I've always made excuses: I'm so busy/stressed/have so much to accomplish that I cannot even begin to think about being neat, let alone actually cleaning up the mess that I've made. That "solution" has always worked just fine for me, at least until law school.

"Stress-messy" was still my M.O. last semester, at least during the week. Now, I'm beginning to think that this may be a poor strategy for me. Instead of calming me down because I have one less task to worry about, I think deep down the mess stresses me out. Cleaning can be really cathartic for me, and in the last few weeks I've found that its much better than surfing the internet or watching tv is at making me feel like I've had a break and am ready to do more schoolwork.

Maybe this is a tiny piece of the wisdom/calm that the 2Ls have found? I know that they are waaay busier than 1Ls, but for the most part they seem to also do a waaay better job at balancing school, life and job than we do.

3 comments:

A. Marigold said...

No, I think the difference is that 1L is really just much harder. It's so different from undergrad, and it's so different from working... it's unlike anything almost any of us have ever done before, which makes it very difficult. By 2L year, even though we all take on more obligations, we sort of have a better idea of what to expect. Balance is easier to come by when you're not in the dark all the time.

Anonymous said...

I'm the same way...I can always tell how stressed I am by looking at how messy my desk is (and really the rest of my apartment).
Outlining was stressing me out this weekend, to a certain extent, and I was surprised to find that cleaning my windows was the perfect solution. Who knew!

(In)Sanity Gal said...

It's all a facade.