In­tro­vert Friendly Saint Self-Care Guide: Bliss­ful Break

Win­ter break is fi­nally here, and I per­son­ally could­n’t be more ex­cited. Es­pe­cially as an in­tro­vert, I can get too ex­cited to spend time at home with less re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. In­stead of look­ing back at my break with re­gret, I want to proac­tively plan how to bal­ance per­sonal re­lax­ation, fam­ily time, hang­ing out with friends in town, and pick­ing up hours at my part time job. It’s over­whelm­ing to feel like you need to please every­one, so cre­at­ing a game plan will min­i­mize your guilt!

I in­ter­viewed fourth-year Com­mu­ni­ca­tions ma­jor and fel­low Paw­print staff mem­ber, Kai­lya Cole, to gain some ad­vice about mak­ing the best out of your time off. She runs an In­sta­gram ac­count called thrifty_­saints where she shares bud­get-friendly ac­tiv­i­ties for Maryville stu­dents-give it a fol­low! To start off, I asked her if she has any fa­vorite bud­get friendly self-care ac­tiv­i­ties she prefers. “Treat your­self with some bud­get-friendly skin­care, I rec­om­mend the brand The Or­di­nary! They have great prod­ucts for dif­fer­ent needs, and at a great price range. I also love any type of prod­uct-ad­vent cal­en­dars or hol­i­day bun­dles are per­fect. Also, press on nails from Wal­greens or CVS are $7 and they last pretty long.”

Tak­ing care of your­self should al­ways be a pri­or­ity, es­pe­cially dur­ing the break. See­ing fam­ily is some­thing that I try not to take for granted ei­ther. “When my grandpa died, I re­al­ized I was work­ing a lot and was­n’t with my fam­ily as much as I should’ve been. It’s im­por­tant to take a step back, take time off your phone, and be pre­sent with your fam­ily.  I al­ways like to take pic­tures, even if I don’t want to, so I can cher­ish the mem­o­ries and look back on them.”

I love the pic­ture tak­ing ad­vice, but I know that some­times ex­tended amounts of time with fam­ily can cause some stress, so mak­ing bound­aries be­fore­hand is ben­e­fi­cial! “Be open with your fam­ily about want­ing per­sonal breaks and ac­com­mo­dat­ing your men­tal needs be­cause it will help cre­ate a healthy bound­ary and main­tain good men­tal health.” If you have pe­ri­ods of free time, try to stay off your phone do some­thing you don’t al­ways get to do. “In­stead of eat­ing or scrolling on my phone mind­lessly, I make sure to have some­thing to do with my hands like cro­chet­ing and mak­ing friend­ship bracelets is fun for me, or you could draw, put a lego set to­gether, or just lis­ten to mu­sic.”

Al­though it can be easy to turn your brain off dur­ing your time off, in­ten­tion­ally mak­ing plans, whether it’s with your­self or your fam­ily, so you can look back on your break and be proud of what you did with your time. Even if it’s one sin­gle thing you wanted to ac­com­plish, it’s worth do­ing!