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Do you know the joke about the elephant? How do you eat an elephant? Answer; one bite at a time.

Earlier today I was feeling as if I were standing in the middle of an entire herd of elephants in danger of being trampled to death under the press of deadlines, demands from every direction for my time, attention, emotion, so I meditated. And one of the clear messages I got was, "You can only fight one battle at a time." You can’t fight tomorrow’s battle today. You can’t have that 3 o’clock meeting if it’s only noon, so fight the battle that’s on your plate at noon, and fight the meeting when the time for it rolls around. You prepare your weapons, cover your ass with paperwork, but in the end you can’t do anything until the battle happens. Worrying about it doesn’t help. That just leads to frantic wheel-spinning like a squirrel chasing it’s tail because it can’t find where it hid it’s cache of nuts. Chasing it’s tail doesn’t get the squirrel one step closer to finding it’s food, and it uses up energy that without the food it won’t have for long, so not only useless but actually counter productive. Panic never helps.

I was chasing my tail this morning. I’ve been chasing my tail since last night. I’ve meditated and I feel better, but I’m hitting the gym now and seeing if I can sweat the rest of this indecision out of me. Not indecision, but too many decisions all hitting at once. I have to push the pile away and take just one thing from it, finish it, then and only then, pick up another. I’ve been trying to pick up handfuls of tasks and then panicking because I can’t hold them all in my arms. That stops and I take a deep breath, let it out slow, and I pick up one stone from the pile, turn it over, see what task I’ve got in hand and work on it. The other stones with their tasks carved into their sides will wait until later. They aren’t going anywhere unless I move them around. Remember in reality you have the power, because the work doesn’t get done without you. It needs you more than you need it. (All right as a writer I need to write the way I need sex, or air to breathe, but I still like the metaphor.)

You can only fight one battle at a time. You can only write one book at a time. You can only write one essay at a time. You can only talk to one editor on the phone at a time. You can only work on one new idea at a time. You can only edit one manuscript at a time.

I’m going to get me a giant size cattle prod and start working through my herd of elephants; one bite at a time.