I struggle with eating elephants sometimes. It’s not due to any kind of elephant shortage. During any given day, or any given week, I’ve got several elephants on my plate. Some are recurring elephants – like this and other Blog posts. Other elephants are of the One-and-Done variety. Some elephants are quite large, and some are much smaller – there’s a sliding scale for elephants, apparently – but they’ve all got to be eaten.
The smaller ones are finished off relatively quickly, but the down side is that those little buggers tend to multiply – almost seeming to increase in number in proportion to how quickly I can eat the ones that came before.
Other elephants are quite large, and there are some that are middling-sized. The point is that they’re there, and, for myself, I’d much rather just sit down and eat that elephant in one sitting – in as close to one bite as I can manage – regardless of the size of the elephant before me.
You’ve all heard the saying before, so I won’t repeat it here, suffice it to say that it certainly hasn’t come from lack of trying.
And this is only covering the elephants I can see – or predict. Life is chock full of stealth elephants that you just don’t see coming until they’re right on top of you, at which point all you can do is limber up up your jaws and get yourself a glass of water to wash it down.
It may come as no surprise to you that, despite all the practical pachyderm processing experience I’ve got, there are times when I’d rather a day or two go by when I just don’t, you know, eat elephants. This will cause me to drag my feet a bit when it comes to the elephants I’ve got to deal with. Then the elephants will start to pile up, until the back pressure forces me to scramble to start eating elephants, taking up the entire day.
Worse, is the feeling that if I can’t finish an elephant off in one sitting, that it’s not worth even starting on that elephant. Which makes little sense because I know – empirically – that even if I can only manage a small bite or two, that still less elephant that’ll be waiting for me when I sit back down. But brains are weird like that and sometimes it’s difficult to focus on the elephant in front of you, rather than the entire herd that’s lined up and waiting for you.
So I’m trying to train myself to recognize those times when my mind is drifting away from the elephants in front of me. and to give myself permission to step away, engage in some planning and preparation. That’s part of the process. Along with some mental floss to maintain a healthy set of chompers.
Thanks for reading. Be safe out there. Be Excellent to Each other – and yourself.
I’ll see you on Thursday.
*No actual elephants were consumed, either partially, or in their entirety, in the composition of this post.
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