I love a full plate. Few things in life bring me more joy than a plate absolutely brimming with food. I imagine a few slices of perfectly cooked, juicy fillet steak, a big dollop of buttery cauliflower mash with dark, rich gravy spilling over the edge, crispy roast sweet potatoes and a pile of salad, with a generous amount of feta, avo, baby tomatoes and balsamic glaze. Just reading that sentence, I can feel the excitement in my chest and stomach. I really do adore a full plate.
Why, then, is such a joyous and wonderful experience tied to such difficulty? I need to get an impossible amount of work done in a totally unrealistic time frame, I need to buy eggs and milk or I won’t be having any breakfast tomorrow morning, I need to call my parents and reply to the last 5 emails that somehow flooded in since I checked 3 minutes ago, and respond to my best friend about that thing he asked me a week ago, and when I get home I have to do the laundry. I bet that’s what you imagined when you read full plate.
That’s the way we always use the phrase, isn’t it? I am totally overwhelmed, frazzled, at my wit’s end; My plate is so full. I wonder how something so genuinely enjoyable became wrapped up in the distasteful experience of being so busy you need to schedule your toilet breaks.
My plate is rather full at the moment, and I wish I meant pasta. I feel sometimes like I need to catch up with each day, rather than being on top of it. It’s not so incredibly awful that it requires any drastic action, but it’s just busy and confusing enough that I always seems to be out of breath, and never quite able to recover. Do this, go here, then I have to… I like planning, I even like working (I know, the horror!), I just don’t like it when I feel like my work and chores are chasing me. Maybe if I so deeply and thoroughly relish a literal full plate, I can do something to try and enjoy my figuratively full one. Because right now I feel like a 6 year old made to sit at the table until I finish my vegetables. I am seriously considering throwing a tantrum.