One Day at a Time

This morning I taught myself a valuable lesson. One I'm sure I've learned before, set on a shelf in my mind and let slowly disappear until I have completely forgotten it. The lesson I retaught myself is to take life one day at a time.
I have a tendency to try to take on fifty things at once, and then when things aren't falling into place perfectly I wonder why my life is such a mess. The obvious answer? Probably because you are not allowing yourself to focus on any one thing. By now you're probably wondering what it is that had my mind circling. Schedules. I love to feel like I know what is going on and when. I still love the spontaneity of the moment, but I want to know that spontaneity is possible, requiring me to know when my free time is. So when BYU put up the schedules for fall semester classes, I jumped on it to figure out my schedule. However, I've been trying to decide what I really want to do with my life, where I want to go and what I want to study. You can only imagine what that did to my head as I pretended to know what I wanted to take in terms of classes.
But instead of taking a moment to thing through one thing at a time, I jumped on all of my thoughts and sent my mind on a wild goose chase. My mind on a wild goose chase is potentially the worst thing that can happen. I completely shut down and begin to hate everything. I couldn't think straight, and it looked like my schedule would just be a big mess, making me even angrier. My job has specific hours, and my schedule would be running over all of them. So, I left it alone and told myself to not even think about it until later. I still sat in my room completely shut down from this experience. (Lame, I know).
Last night I talked to my mom about my lack of plan and she gave me some advice as to what she thought would be best. I then talked to a friend about what religion class we were going to take, and after that I felt like I had a plan. I knew at least one thing, and I could plan the rest of my schedule from that one point. So, I left it until morning and then got to work.
This morning was marvelous in comparison to last night's train wreck. I looked at my schedule and chose when I wanted time open and when I willing to have classes. Literally it all fell into place. And that was when I realized that all I needed to do was step back a little, and let my mind go just one step at a time. I know I've learned this a million times before, but it always surprises me how quickly I forget what I've learned. So with it fresh in my mind, I'll try to remember this lesson. One moment at a time, one step at a time, one day at a time.