Balancing and Adjusting

From the outside perspective, it seems like I hang out with the others friends much more than mine. As I reflect on who we spend the most time with, it's actually our family members. Both of us seem to have a lot of family members and they take up most of our free days, which essentially is Saturday. We both see our family members very often and I appreciate that we have a good relationship with them. Although it is unfortunate because there are so many friends to catch up with and hang out with, but unfortunately there is only one available day of the week (at least for now because of the school schedule and life adjustments). And on top of that, I love making new friends and sometimes I wonder why I do that because its already hard to maintain relationships with those I already have aside through technology. Still trying to figure out a good balance. 

One major change since being married is the financial factor. Although I try not to make it a stressor in my life because I know that if I'm wise with my finances and if I know that God always provides, I shouldn't be worried, I still do. The biggest thing is just more responsibility and more bills, and now I actually have to be mindful of what we are spending our money on in order to be sure that we will have enough to pay bills and such throughout the month. Since being in the financial peace class, I've been intentionally thinking about budgeting and how to handle my money. It's been quite difficult but it'll take a couple of months to find a balance of what to spend where. The past month, I haven't touched my credit card or my wallet, and the only thing we've really spent money on is our necessary expenses like grocery shopping, travel and bills. It feels good to bring healthy food from home every day and not have to buy city priced food from the deli. The only hard part I'm having trouble budgeting is the "hang out and entertainment" expenses. It seems like there's not much wiggle room to go out to eat at restaurants and such but many times it seems like its inevitable because there's always a persons birthday to go to or a special event to attend. I'm so privileged to have great friends to be able to attend events all the time but I'm still learning a balance. But, I realize that I love eating at home cooked food. 

One thing I love about the other and I is that we can fun without the use of substance. Yesterday we went to a birthday party at a lounge and it was casual and alcohol involved. Watching him dance around, being entertaining and not needing to use alcohol to have fun was a blessing to me. I love that we truly find joy in The Lord and can have fun anytime and everywhere. 

One thing I'm not really looking forward to is this coming Fall semester. I already feel the stress and the pressure of the crazy schedule I'm going to have and the amount of time I'm going to invest at work, internship, school, and that's just the least of it. My work schedule in the summer has been pretty hectic even with just forty hour work weeks. Work is never boring, there's always something to do, there's actually never enough time to finish anything, even working overtime and trying to finish work. I put so much heart into work that after work I become so exhausted.

There are many times recently where I purposely become unproductive after work hours and not want to do anything because I'm just tired and exhausted from a long day. This fairly new job, this new married life, the upcoming internship, the finishing of school, there's so many adjustments and I'm still learning to balance everything.