The Overwhelming Artichoke

This is Digby Pancake. Has anything ever seemed super overwhelming to you?

Maybe you don’t want to clean your house. It’s too dirty.

Maybe you don’t want to go the doctor. It’s too scary.

Maybe you don’t want to start exercising. Nope. Sure don’t.

But maybe you’re like Girl Person. You love to do something like cooking. But there are things you don’t know. There are projects you are afraid of. It seems like a lot of work. It seems that you may make a mistake. And you don’t know if it will be worth the effort. So you just don’t do whatever it is. It’s too overwhelming.

Girl Person showed us something called an artichoke today.

I thought it looked like any other vegetable to me. But Girl Person said it was a little complicated. It is something called a thistle. Doesn’t sound very friendly to me.

Girl Person told us she loves to eat artichokes. And she remembers the first time she ever ate one in an Italian restaurant with her mom Person, our Gandma. She’s always wanted to try to cook one. But, well, she bought some already in cans. Seemed easier that way. Because it was easier that way.

But when Girl Person saw some artichokes in the store the other day, she felt a little guilty. All this time she had taken for granted the artichoke and how much work it was to make it tasty.

She decided right then she would do what she had put off for years. She was gonna cook that artichoke and eat it. But she said we didn’t have to.

But the problem? She didn’t know what in the world she was doing. So she watched videos. She watched people try to prepare it.

Then she freaked out, told herself this was too hard. And she put the artichokes on the picnic table to think about it. They are still there. That’s right. Sometimes, something may be really hard for us to do. We tell ourselves we can do anything we put our mind to. And then we feel bad when we fail to act on our fears. But guess what?

Today is a new day. After Girl Person thought about it, she knew what she had to do. She had to realize she was overwhelmed. And that was ok. That was more than ok. If everything was easy, what challenges would we have? How would we get to be better?

So today, the overwhelming artichoke will be cooked up. What will happen? That’s not the point. But you can be sure we will fill you in tomorrow. We hope you can stand the anticipation.

Know that you’re not alone when you feel overwhelmed. There is a lot to be overwhelmed at lately. But realizing the problems we are having now isn’t all there is to life is key. Pick a project. Pick a task. Make yourself better by learning something new.