Harvest International

Written by Wendy Mendoza

            I find myself in this never-ending loop of always being tired, burnt-out, wanting to just relax but always feeling like I’m not doing enough. I find myself always working on things that don’t need my immediate attention and things that can be worked on another day or time or week. Constant burnout has become my state of mind. My family always tells me that I need rest. I need to relax. But, I just can’t. If I’m not doing something with my hands, I feel like I’m not doing anything at all. If I don’t fill my brain with activities, I feel like a letdown. Like someone who never does anything right. But, the older I get the more I let myself live in the moment, the more I let myself just relax. I don’t know how people can find the time to do ten billion things in a day; it astonishes me. I find myself comparing my life to theirs, but then I remember that everyone has a journey, a path that fate has in store for them. 

         If it were up to me, I would spend all my time reading. I love to get lost in books and the worlds that they build. Reading helps me escape, but it also helps me write. I get a lot of inspiration from what I read, and what I pull into my writing. Getting lost in these books feels like peace. It feels like a warm sunny day spent at the beach or a nice cold night spent in front of a fireplace. To me, reading and writing go hand in hand like peanut butter and jelly, like a grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup, or all those other food combinations. And although writing for myself isn’t something that I do often, I do let my imagination run wild when it comes to what I could write about, who I could write about and why I choose to write.

         I want to one day be an inspiration to others, to people who feel like they don’t get their voice heard and for those who have more to say but are afraid or too tired to. Dealing with constant burn-out and wanting to do more will always be a never-ending cycle in my life and one that I take with me everywhere I go. I hope to one day finally be able to relax.