CHINESE CHICKEN SALAD WITH A CREAMY PEANUT DRESSING

Hi everyone! Welcome back to The Dairy Free Diaries! I hope you guys had a great week. In today’s post I am sharing my absolute favorite salad recipe, which I will get to in a minute. But first, I just want to check in with you guys and talk about my week.

One word – Exhausting: I want to start off by explaining what I mean by “exhausting”. I guess that word sort of has a negative connotation but for me, this perfectly describes my week in a more positive way.

From Monday through Thursday, I had to get up at 6am every morning for my new job. Before this week I had been sleeping in until around 7,8, and 9am so waking up at 6am was extremely tiring.

In addition, I am working full time, which means I am not getting home until around 6pm. And by the time I eat dinner and change out of my work clothes, its already time for me to get ready for bed.

And I have to go to bed and do this routine all over again. And that as a whole, is why my week has been exhausting, but in a good way because I am starting a new job and getting myself into a new routine.

Low point: Stressing out because I over planned by week thinking I had more time after work than I actually did. So, this week was very new for me because I was completely changing my daily routines due to my work hours.

The Sunday before I really tried to plan out my week based off of the habits I was already doing beforehand and my new schedule. I thought I would be able to stick to my plan but after work on Monday, I realized it was not realistic at all.

And when this realization hit me, I started to stress out. I was stressing over if I would be able to keep up with the habits I was trying to form or not.

I circled back into this old mindset of worrying and getting anxious over things instead of taking action to solve my problems. I spent all of Monday night feeling anxious, but after work on Tuesday I got a hold of myself.

I remembered that acting is the only thing you can do when your problems are making you stressed out. And so, starting Tuesday morning I changed my routine.

Using Monday as a guide, I realized what I was able to do during the week, as well as what I needed to do this weekend. I kept my daily habits and small goals during the week because that’s what I absolutely had to do.

These include working out, journaling, reading, etc. Then, I scheduled in 15-30 mins each day during the week to work on my blog.

If I can squeeze in more time for this, then I will, but I am not going to plan for it. Instead, I will take it on a day-by-day basis. In addition, a big wake up call for me was that I can’t study for the LSAT after work.

I tried on Wednesday but kept catching myself dozing off. I made it a point to myself that when I’m studying for the LSAT my full attention needs to be on that. And I can’t do that if I’m on the verge of falling asleep.

So, I am going to schedule my LSAT studying for the weekend, but if I have the energy during the week I can get ahead. Ultimately, I am just in the process of adjusting to my new lifestyle, which can be extremely hard sometimes.

And this can be a struggle for a lot of people, including myself, but just know that its possible to keep your goals while also juggling other opportunities. It may seem hard and overwhelming at first, but once you plan in a realistic way, you will see the difference.

High point: Feeling good after getting in a workout once I got home from work on Tuesday. This high point goes hand in hand with my low point.

I was struggling but starting to make some changes. I wasn’t planning on working out this night because once I got off work, I could already feel the tiredness coming on.

But once I got home, for some reason I felt this urge to workout. I had mustered just enough energy and motivation and I worked out. I got in a good sweat, and afterwards I felt amazing.

I was so proud of myself for spending my time bettering myself when I could have just easily sat on my phone for that time. And for that I was happy with myself for taking advantage of my time and energy when I had it.