Everywhere I look I see people constantly posting about the stresses and strains of everyday life and how busy we all are, usually followed by some generic comment about the importance of self-care and a frothy instruction to take "even just 15 minutes a day out of our busy schedules" to practice self-love/read a book/meditate/lock ourselves in the loo away from family members.
Whilst I don't disagree with the idea of prioritising self-care (quite the opposite), I can't be the only person who thinks that, actually, most people do manage to catch some downtime most days and that the unintended effect of all this hyper-busyness is to make those of us who manage to find more than the abysmal-yet-oft-repeated-"magical 15 minutes" feel lazy and undeserving of a break?
I work full-time in a demanding job and tend to put in about 1-2 hours of overtime each day. I come home, make dinner, tidy, do a bit of life-admin etc and usually I can still manage to squeeze in a couple of hours of downtime most evenings. If I'm tired it's generally just a bit of reading or tv so we're not talking anything life-changing, but at the weekend it's much more and I regularly book the odd long-weekender off work to go away, take my parents out for lunch or potter about at home. Sure, some weeks feel busier than others but a couple of hours each night to decompress is pretty achievable most days and I don't think it's particularly unusual for most people, with the exception of friends of mine who are still going through the newborn baby stage or have more than one very young child.
I don't think it's healthy to see downtime as some kind of luxury or indulgence only afforded to the idle or those whose lives aren't full enough. Surely taking a healthy amount of time for yourself most days is crucial to survival and to our ability to cope with the more challenging aspects of our lives, whether that be a demanding career, caring for dependants or otherwise. I certainly know that were I unable to take that time to decompress each evening I would be less able to fully commit myself to my work during the day, but my job is not my life and my work phone gets switched off when I leave the office.
The trend for posting these "busy busy busy" type of posts seems to be on the rise and I can't help but think that rather than giving readers permission to take some real, meaningful time for themselves and their families, they actually have the opposite effect of glorifying unmaintainable levels of activity and normalising this perception that women must be constantly run ragged or risk the accusation that they aren't living their fullest life or maximising their potential.
Interested to hear how others interpret these sorts of posts about self-care. Are we really all that busy? Are all women simply hurling ourselves from one full-throttle activity to another one in some kind of perpetual frenzy? Or actually do most of us have more balance in our lives?