I’m coming out of the coma. The mental coma that moving put me into. Anyone who has moved recently knows that moving is brutal. And anyone who hasn’t moved recently probably doesn’t remember how brutal moving is because they’ve completely blocked it out of their memory. Which I hope to do soon. Very soon.
In January we learned that we were moving. We were moving for all the right reasons, and we were happy to move. More about all that later. Probably. Five weeks after the announcement, we were in a new home, in a new city, in a new state. Everything was different. As I unpacked the boxes that I had packed in the previous weeks, and tried to find the perfect place for each of our treasured belongings, I really lost sight of everything else.
When you move, it becomes your one priority. The move comes first – everything else depends on it. Want to make a sandwich? First you have to find the box with the plates, the box with the knife, and find out where the closest grocery store is to buy bread and fixings. And condiments – because all of your food was given away or tossed before the move. Want to take a shower? Find the soap, towel, and change of clothes. And hope the shower curtain was packed on top, or you’ll need some extra towels to mop up the floor. Which you’ll need to wash. But first you need to head to the hardware store for an extra fixture so that your modern dryer can attach to a not-so-modern home.
Everything takes longer. Sometimes days longer.
Which means that all the things that were important before the move have been demoted from first place to 5th. Or 8th. or 92nd.
But now I’m coming out of the coma. The shower curtain has been found and hung. The dryer works. We discovered we don’t have a dishwasher, but we’re managing. And all my old priorities get to be priorities again. We are rediscovering normal in our new surroundings.
But while I was away, my priorities multiplied. Now everything has been waiting for weeks to get my attention. And I can’t take it all on at once. So each day, I’m trying to eat the frog.
I pick one of the big frogs that is waiting for my attention, and tackle that one. One at a time, day after day, I’m taking on the frogs. Some frogs take more than one day. That’s okay. It is too daunting to eat the whole frog farm at once, so I’m eating them one at a time. I suppose that either they’ll stop croaking, or I’ll croak. Sorry. Bad pun. Couldn’t help myself.
Some of my frogs are as simple as sending out e-mail followup. Or writing a post I’ve been meaning to. Some are tackling bigger projects. But over the next weeks and months, I’ll gobble up all the frogs that have been needing my attention.
Though, I’m not sure that Mark Twain had it right. I think that if it’s your job to eat a frog, you should eat it first thing… and then update your resume second. Though I won’t be updating my resume any time soon. I love my job, and all the metaphorical frogs that go with it.
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