the "fun list"

TEA TIME!!!

Tea for the day: fusion of green and white tea. What tea would you like me to serve you now?

During one of my hotline trainings, we were discussing "self-care". As the name implies, it means taking care of yourself to avoid or reduce the probability of getting secondary trauma or depression as a result of interacting with survivors of trauma (in the case of my hotline: survivors of rape and sexual assault). Speaking of which, I had my very first call in my very first shift overnight on the Monday that just passed! It went very well, although I was so nervous at first and felt like I forgot everything from the training until I picked up that phone!!

Anyways...among the suggestions for self-care is to create a "fun list"! I really like this, I mean, a lot of us create lists about errands we should get out of our way, however, although I think that is very good habit, when we finally have some free time, we have no idea what to do! We therefore end up spending those hours in facebooking, watching T.V., etc. when we could be doing something we love to do but always felt we didn't have the time or mood for it!

So I finally decided to create this "fun list" (although in my case, I decided to call it the Free Time List (a boring and lame name, I know!) because I also added hobbies I wanna learn, like knitting, or relearn after a while of not doing it like Tae Kwon Do). In my current list though, I just added stuff I wanna do during my free time while I'm in Boston in the vicinity of my campus so that I don't feel too overwhelmed with the amount of stuff I wanna do (although my list is still looking somewhat overwhelming...).

What do you **Tea Mates** think about this? Any other suggestions about how to deal with "free time"?

From your Tea Mate,
Reema B. :-)