So this quarter has been tough. Not because Greek is exceptionally hard. Doing it as an intensive is just a bit demanding. Having one’s brain so thoroughly focused on one thing all the time drains you. As a result, you need to do to things to keep yourself happy and avoid insanity: decompress and recharge. I’m realizing these two are very different things.

I’m not really sure how to explain my distinction between the two, so I’m just going to discuss them in separate posts.

First I turn to decompressing. For me, decompressing is the more mind-centered of the two topics. When your brain is running all the time, it needs a break. The body does this somewhat naturally through dreams, but that’s mostly for the subconscious. To decompress the conscious you have to immerse the mind in something that requires less—even little to no—work for your mental faculties. This can be a menial task like cleaning, or something more relaxing like reading a book or watching TV.

As mentioned in a previous post, I watch a lot of TV. I mean a lot. It’s been declining this quarter and my DVR is actually getting quite full. I hope to remedy that after finals. So decompressing, I’ve got down. You could call me the king of decompressing. Recharging however, has taken some work. Only recently did I realize the two were actually distinct yet working in tandem. I’ll get to that tomorrow.

My question to you is this: what do you do to decompress and how often do you do it?