A story about overwhelm
Muddle and the Too-Many-Things Morning
Muddle has nine jobs to do and cannot start any of them. A story about feeling overwhelmed, and the smallest possible first step.
3 minutes to read aloud · 😵💫 Wobbly
Watch it read aloud · 3 min
Muddle had nine things to do.
Tidy the room. Feed the snail. Finish the painting. Find the other shoe. Write to Memo. Water the plant. Take the cup back. Practise the song. Something else that Muddle had forgotten, which was somehow the worst one.
Muddle stood in the middle of the room and did absolutely none of them.
This is the strange thing about too-many-things. You would think that having nine jobs would make you do nine jobs. Instead it makes you stand quite still in the middle of the room while all nine shout at you at once, and then it is lunchtime and there are still nine.
"Too... many... things," said Muddle, and sat down on the floor, in the middle of everything, and put both paws over the ears.
Wobbly found Muddle there.
"How many things?"
"Nine. Maybe ten. There's one I can't remember, which is worse than the nine."
Wobbly nodded, because Wobbly understands this better than anybody.
"Right. Which one is the smallest?"
"They're all enormous."
"Smallest," said Wobbly, patiently.
Muddle thought. "The cup, I suppose. The cup just goes in the kitchen."
"Do the cup."
"But that won't help. There will still be eight."
"Do the cup," said Wobbly.
So Muddle picked up the cup and carried it to the kitchen and put it down, which took eleven seconds.
And something small happened. The shouting in Muddle's head got very slightly quieter, because there is a sort of magic in it: a fluff standing in the middle of nine jobs is stuck, but a fluff who has done one job is a fluff who is doing the jobs. It is a completely different fluff.
Muddle did the snail next. Then the plant, because the plant was next to the snail.
By teatime, seven were done, and the shoe was still lost, and Muddle had remembered the forgotten one and it turned out to be buy more glue, which was not frightening at all.
Muddle has more ideas than anybody in Candyfloss Land. That is why the mornings get so full.
Now Muddle just starts with the cup.
