I knew it was coming. The morning trill in my head. For you non bird lovers, this is not always musical. It can be high pitched and long and dry.
All the things and people I love are now in a faceoff with all the things I must start and do. A thought has been building in me for months now (coming off a season when my word for the year was finish): I really need to change my tune. The expected arrival this week of a very fun but swollen (read long and involved) project has made a cacophony of my head space (like entering the jungle at the zoo with its chirps, rattles, squawks, whistles, caws and croaks. (I am making myself laugh here. Now reading my first true-crime story—“The Feather Thief: Beauty, Obsession, and the Natural History Heist of the Century” by Kirk Wallace Johnson—with my fly-fish loving, nature and outdoor enthusiast bonus son, I see and hear birds everywhere.)
For all the motivational notes coming to mind, this (what a finch might feel in the face of an owl) has obviously been the challenge of humankind since Noah.
Stand up straight with your shoulders back.
Put a stake in the ground.
One foot in front of the other.
Rally the troops! (Rally J.)
Preparation equals opportunity.
Have faith.
Do the next thing.
Do life like pie. One slice at a time.
Rome wasn’t built in a day.
Do the hardest thing first.
Apropos to my life, finish one paragraph at a time.
[Your pep talk here.]
Starting today, this very hour, I am changing the narrative flapping and fluttering in me from I must do this to I get to do this and moving on to the drum of the woodpecker at work in the woods behind us. If I end up in the proverbial trees again, I’ll wing it.
Strategically, it is wise not to cross a river at its most swollen point. Cross at the ford. Do it to Abba’s “Dancing Queen.”
