How do couples manage their time?

I don’t know. If you know the answer, please tell me.

Believe or not, I’m in my early twenties and I have never been in a relationship. I have no idea what it’s like to actually be in one. But recently, I’ve been witnessing my one close friend handling with hers, which has triggered this question in me.

She is a college student. Since also being one myself, I know exactly how strenuous and exhausting a day of a student’s life could be with tons of assignments, projects, not to mention the inevitable part-time jobs and extra-curriculum activities to polish the CV. Everything will easily run out of control and drive you mad if you’re not able to manage a little while for yourself during the day to reflect and relax. I sometimes struggle a lot to just finish all the tasks without any time to take care of myself. But somehow, my friend is still doing very well. Above all, she’s able to do that WHILE BEING IN A RELATIONSHIP.

How does she do it???

How do people do it???

I’m not talking about toxic, abusive relationships but healthy, happy ones. As far as I know, being in a relationship with someone else means that you’d have to take out a specific amount of your own time every day for that special one to take them out, send a few texts or at least to think about them. In other words, you would need to truly make efforts to tailor your schedule to your significant others’ in order to make sure that they feel cared and loved. I don’t know how much time lovers spend for each other daily, or how much is enough. But I’m sure it is there somewhere included in their schedules which might be already tight with their jobs, studying, hobbies or even daily routines.

This truly makes me stunned. Love couples – masters of time management, you guys got my respect!

Still, can someone explain how? I’m ready to take some notes.

Or being in a relationship is probably not difficult as I think it is. I’m just terrible with time management and being busy is the excuse why I am still single till this day.

But am I sad because of that?

Not at all.

I don’t rush for it either. I can imagine how my life could turn into a hot mess if I get caught up in a relationship. So thank God for letting me be free and single!

Moreover, what’s the point of whining, being miserable all the time just because of “loneliness”? Are you actually lonely?

I don’t know what your answer is but I’m only single, not lonely. I’m surrounded by my family and friends. I’m taking my time to look after myself, to fully embrace myself, to learn and grow. Maybe I’m spending too much time for myself. Maybe this is the reason why I’m bad at time management. Maybe this is the reason why I’m single. If so, I’m totally cool with it. I don’t need any guy to make me feel happy and loved.

At the end of the day, being in a relationship is not a bad thing at all. Being single isn’t either. The key is always self-love. Once you’re fully in love with yourself, happiness will forever be there whether you’re single or taken.

How I get depressed these days or any other day

Yeah

Obviously, I’m gonna grumble about studying, grades and school stuff!

I mean, what else can I talk about when I’m still “sitting on the school’s chair” (ngồi trên ghế nhà trường), and being haunted by the idea that grade is the only measurement of how competent (incompetent) I am. So yes! I am ridiculously obsessed with achievements. I hate to admit this, honestly. Still, this is not what I should feel shameful about since what so-called “achievement obsession” is a common “disease” of most of the Vietnamese students in recent time. But again, this is also not what to feel proud of.

Anyways, get back to the story, this semester has been a disaster. I have been hit up with 2 Cs and there will be surely more. It was already painful to get a C itself. But then I started to compare myself to other fellows in the result list, the pain went doubled.

“I’m so stupid. I’m incompetent. I’m useless. I’m helpless. I can never be like my friends…”

Each time a C comes, I feel like a door has just slammed on my face. After that come disappointment, self-hatred, hopelessness, and depression. Things just get worse since the more Cs I get, the more doors keep slamming on my face until the whole world shut down and there are no more doors. I have no idea what I’ll turn out to be by that time.

Some people are prone to blame the exterior factors when the results don’t come out well. But I cannot do that. When it comes to failure, I look into myself first for the answer, simply because it makes perfect sense to me. The process always goes like this: I dig deep into my head, trying to remember what went wrong from the beginning, and when the memories return, they come along with negative thoughts. I’ll constantly blame myself for not hard-working enough, not capable enough.

Nevertheless, I luckily bear the thought of having a growth mindset, the term that says I should set my mind positive through failures. Thanks to this, I’m able to pick myself up and move on. I find it really struggling to remind myself of this while carrying too much of self-hate problem. However, it does work. My growth mindset and my self-hatred could get along together. This may seem paradoxical but in fact, not. The mindset says: “Every failure is a chance to learn and growth.” On the other hand, my dark side shouts: “You didn’t work hard enough! That’s why you fail!” So these two somehow push me forward and put me in the position in which I torture myself at the same time.

I guess I should feel thankful for that dark side of mine as it didn’t shout the word “helpless”. This word could set my mind into “fixed”, which would only exacerbate my self-hatred and my academic transcript. If I place my capability into words like “fixed”, “limited”, I’ll be totally a deadwood. Though I do feel helpless most of the time but when it comes to studying, I try my best to exclude that thought.

In short, at the moment, I’m quite down but I’ll find a way…

P/S: Really surprised about how this note came out to be. I thought at the end I would write something awful or put my situation in a stalemate. But no, I made a way for it!