I'm horrible at self-care. Self-care is one of those things that I've always been bad at and something that will always be something that I need to make sure and do.

Thinking back to my upbringing, I'm not sure that self-care was something that was explicitly taught to me by either parent, though I think it's probably something that both parents believed in at its core. It's definitely not an issue that get's talked about a lot in this country.

Mondays are my late days. Typically, I'll get into work at 10:00 and leave at 7:00 pm. No big issue there. But since my boss is out for 6 weeks on maternity leave, the duties of keeping the GSC open from 8:00 - 7:00 pm on Mondays has fallen onto my shoulders. Because I now have to come in at 8:00 and work through til 7:00 pm, my boss said that I should take a two-hour lunch on Mondays and should use the additional make-up hour to take care of my counseling appointments on Fridays, in lieu of taking an hour of sick time.

But as I was finishing up my lunch today, I realized that I had another hour of time due to me. But instead of seeing the hour off as a good thing, I realized that the work on my desk needed tending to. So I decided to get back to work and "get to it."

As I mentioned, my boss is out. So I've had to take on a few new responsibilities. So my schedule is fairly jam packed from 8:00 - 5:00 pm. I know it always seems like I have all this free time because I do my blogs during "working hours," and truthfully, sometimes I do have A LOT of free time, but I usually end up staying a little after 5:00 pm anyways, so I think it all evens itself out.

I'm only mentioning all this because typically, not only would I just skip my extra hour of free time and get back to work, I'd sometimes just drop that hour altogether as if it never existed. So not only would I put in more hours on that day, I'd *never* even use that extra hour that was owed me.

Why? I have no idea. It's kind of silly, isn't it? Why am I willing to go above and beyond my duties and hourly requirements? Will it bring me more money? No. Will I still have work to do, even if I use that free hour as a work hour? Yes. Will it put me into a better light with my superiors? Only if they notice me not taking the extra hour, which I don't advertise.

What I need to do is find a balance between my college days, when I'd skip class willy nilly, and now, when I feel obligated to put in my time for the man.

I guess to take that a step further, I need to make it a self-care a value that I live by. It's something that I've been putting on the back burner for too long and I think I'd really benefit from making my time my own.

But on another level, I need to show Parker the importance of self-care in her life so that she realizes that it's important to take care of herself. I think it's important to model good behaviors, but I also want to talk about it with her at some point in the future.

That's all I got. Back to work.

PS: I'm going to use that extra hour this week sometime. Don't worry, I'm definitely going to use that hour.

- Matthew