We’re all familiar with the age old question, “How do you eat an elephant?” But sometimes, as single parents especially, I think we forget the answer. If you are anything like me, the second your head hits the pillow your mind decides that the entire world’s problems have to be solved before morning. Yes, I am determined to find a solution to world hunger before I go to sleep tonight, along with figuring out Logan’s new schedule with his dad and where I am going to scrounge up enough money to pay for daycare tomorrow morning. Oh, and about a million other things that also need solutions before morning. Does it surprise you that I don’t sleep well at night?
It is easy to get caught up in the big picture. There is so much to do every day and as a single parent you don’t have the luxury of relying on someone else to do them for you. If it seems like your to-do list is a mile long, that’s probably because it is, but if you learn to look at it one thing at a time it seems just a little bit less daunting. Look at as much as you can handle right now, in this moment—if that’s only an hour, that’s ok! Think of the things that need to be done in the next hour, get those out of the way, and move on to the next thing. Don’t allow yourself to look at the entire list at once. Everything on your list will still get done; this just cuts out the initial panic attack that we all go through as we look at the list wondering how in the world it will all possibly get done with only 24 hours in a day.
Don’t bite off more than you can chew. No one ever got anywhere by trying to swallow the elephant all at once. Remember, the world’s problems don’t have to be solved by morning. In the end, things always work themselves out. It’s just rarely the way we imagined them.