In keeping with the “How do you eat an elephant?” idiom, the correct answer to the cupcake question is “one bite at a time”. But there are multiple ways to eat cupcakes, and in fact life is a lot like cupcakes–there are multiple ways to get them down.

If I had to choose one way to eat a cupcake though, it would be one bite at a time. Consequently, this is how I’ve decided to live. But let’s be real for a moment, I thought of this concept while brushing my teeth this morning, not while eating cupcakes.

I’ve said this before–I can’t handle thinking about too much stuff at once. If I think about a busy weekend on a Thursday, my stomach gets tense and my mind starts racing. That is what I call, shoving the cupcake down your throat without chewing, and at a very young age, our mums have always told us to chew our food. We don’t swallow our food without chewing, so why do we “swallow” predictions for the future before they’ve been served to us? And by “swallow” here, I mean like, swallowing the fact that you have a million things to do in two days before those million things have even had a chance to present themselves.

You’ve gotta chew. Chew your food, and enjoy it. The million things on your to-do list can’t get done all at once, they have to be done one at a time, and when you look at your to-do list from the perspective of doing just one thing in that one moment, the list doesn’t seem half as bad.

When I was driving my mom and brother home from Las Vegas last weekend, I would look at the signs that said “Los Angeles 222 miles” and think holy shit. When I was running my first half-marathon a year and a half ago, and saw the sign that said I’d only completed three miles with ten left to go, I thought HOLY SHIT. The best way for me to face these situations was to tell myself to “just get through this one piece” or “this one step” or “this one mile”, because that was the easiest way for me to look at the big picture. Or the big cupcake, if you will.

I have no idea how this weekend is going to turn out. I have things planned with a couple of different friends, and worrying about fitting in time with my boyfriend, AND time with myself is futile. All I have is this one bite, this one moment in front of me. This weekend must be taken piece by piece, because plans fail.

The sun never shines bright enough when you plan for it.

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Monique Muro

Monique is an exceedingly happy human from LA. She runs the blog A Novel Quest, and writes. A lot.

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