206 bones in the body. A seemingly endless number of origins, insertions, innervations and actions to memorise and internalise. Oh, and a gazillion tests and assignments all due next week…In the midst of all sorts of dramas going on around you.
Here’s what you do.
Take and breath, and take it one bone at a time…”bird by bird” to quote Anne Lamott:
“Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write. [It] was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said. ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.'”
Don’t worry about how much you’ve got to do. Start where you are and do what you can.
It’s going to be okay. Just take it bone by bone.