Self Care is not Always a Bubble Bath

One of my best friends Steph recently created some content on an ever-growing platform, TikTok, that I think deserves to go viral. It’s a video of her cleaning her bathtub, talking about how that was as much an act of self care as taking the bath itself, because by cleaning the tub, she’s allowing herself to take a clean bath when she needs one. Here's a link to the video, for those interested: https://www.tiktok.com/@thespiritualstove/video/6918016353689488646?lang=en

Now, let me clarify. I love bubble baths. I am not looking down on anyone currently planning a luxurious bath this evening, and neither is Steph. I think the suggestion here is that often, self care is planning ahead.

I thought about this. I looked in my fridge. I had plenty of herbs and veggies that had probably gone bad, and I also had plenty of fresh lettuce to toss into a salad with some fresh salmon and avocados. I had enough food to make a great dinner, but part of me still wanted to order pizza. “Self care… I should just order in…” I thought, as I closed my fridge and nearly let the rest of my fresh food go bad while I’d be happy spending $35 on delivery ($35 is roughly a week's worth of groceries for me, a single lady living alone.)

I paused. I thought about Steph’s video. I thought about the message in the video. “We have to stop acting like self care is taking a bath.” I have to stop acting like self care is taking the easy way out.

I opened the fridge again and I cleaned it, tossing the food that had gone bad and making sure to use the rest of the food that was fresh, and renewing a vow to have less food waste and buy less excessively each week. It was a Sunday, so naturally I was working on a weekly budget and I added $35 into the mix and labeled it “pizza night,” because I deserved a night that week where I didn’t have to cook - but it should come after I cook up all of my fresh veggies. Plus, one of my New Year's intentions (I purposefully don't call these resolutions) is to relish in the process more, and to stop giving in to immediate gratification when there's an alternate route that gives me something to look forward to, and, in this case, something I can budget for and feel better about doing knowing I wasn't wasting any fresh groceries.

I still get my pizza night, my groceries don't die a slow, wasteful death in the fridge. Everyone wins!

Self care is being productive and proactive so that you can fully relax later without any fridges to clean, any lingering emails to send, or bathtubs to scrub. The way I tackle my day now versus the way I tackled my days a year ago is vastly different, and I can divide these times in my life by “before and after realizing that self care is, sometimes, doing your taxes before going out to get your nails done.”

Seriously.

Now, I knock my to-do list out of the park before noon, allowing me to complete my workday and budget for any last minute projects or tasks, and then I can shut my computer at closing time and do so knowing that my work mode can finally switch to relax mode, and I can make that switch without hesitation or anxiety.

So, that’s the message here. It’s okay to budget for pizza, it’s absolutely okay to take a nice bubble bath... but what’s even better is if you’re doing those things with peace of mind.