Monday, February 15, 2010

Me and my elephant

I have a terrible sense of balance. I sometimes feel lopsided, clumsy and awkward. Like gravity plays tricks on me. It's nothing serious. I just stay away from funhouses and avoid walking on high wires.

I have trouble with balancing other things too. Not just my head on my shoulders.

I remember when I was in second grade, my teacher, Miss Pistole, who was quite old and not very nice, would check "needs to spend time more wisely" on my report card every six weeks. Truth is, I would finish her boring assignments before the rest of the class and I had nothing left to do but irritate Patricia Grissom, who sat at the desk next to me. She was so easy to irritate. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Practice spelling words that end with a silent "e?'

Lame.

But the point of this is that I realize time is one of those things I don't balance well. Priorities is another. All the important/urgent/dire things stack on top of each other and it's hard to know how to allocate time and attention to each. It's like when you say, "If only I had a day to catch up!" Then when you get one, the sticky notes on your refrigerator, your desk, the dashboard of your car and your bathroom mirror, not to mention the unanswered emails and unreturned voice mails get ignored because the prospect of facing all that stuff down is more than you can bear to think about. Makes my already unbalanced head spin.

Ecclesiastes has that verse that says "everything is meaningless" and another that says "all things are wearisome." They make me laugh a little because I know I've said those things. Been tempted to write them into a song or two as well. But then I come to my senses and remember that some things are worth giving time and energy to. Now where to steal those minutes from....?

There's that gross saying, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time." I don't wanna eat an elephant, but I do wanna handle the stuff of my life better. And I suppose the best way is to take things a bite at a time.

So that they never become an elephant.

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