Damn, it’s good to say that. For the past year and a half, I have been juggling school and work. Difficult was an understatement.

My routine was consisted of going to work in the morning on weekdays and doing school work when I get home seven days a week. There had been a lot of sleepless nights. Barely had time to do anything fun. And my social life went from barely existing to nada.

Last week was the last week of the program. But I am still currently waiting for an approval signature from my thesis sponsor, so I still have my brain in school mode. My body is currently adjusting to not having to do school work anymore. At least for now – I am deciding if I want to continue on with a PhD. But that is for another time.

My routine is definitely out of whack currently. Since I have been on a tight schedule for a while, I do not quite know what to do on the time that freed up. So I am rebuilding my routine now. Slowly. Like I said, my brain is still in school mode, and my body is catching up on all the sleep that I missed.

One thing that I need to get back on is reading. I had to sacrifice the main form of my escapism. This year, I only read four books and each book took months to finish. But my brain is currently on school mode still so I haven’t been able to pick up a book yet.

I want to get back into cooking as well. My diet took a huge hit. I ate every allergen. I ate a lot of instant ramen noodles. I relied on food deliveries.

I also want to go back to exercising. My health in general took a hit, I gained a lot of weight because I was eating unhealthy, I wasn’t moving around, and practically not sleeping. So I’d like to go back to cardio and lifting weights like I used to.

For now, these are the things that I want to go back to and incorporate back to my routine. Hoping that everything should balance out.