The Emergency Chicken – The Summer Sequel!
The Emergency Chicken – the summer sequel – the story continues.
The secret of why there is a chicken in the freezer at all times – just in case – is now out there. Up until now, it is something that I have done for as long as I can remember. Since ‘as long as I can remember’ happens to be just before my son was born, that means I have been doing this for at least the last fifteen years. You know what they say, time flies when you are having fun!
I’ve also realised that not only do I have an emergency chicken in the freezer, I have an emergency packet of puff pastry in there too. Want to know why? It’s there because you just never know when you might need to throw together an urgent cheese and tomato tart. Confession: during the Covid 19 pandemic I didn’t worry about if we had enough loo rolls or milk. I just worried that I might not be able to buy flour to make pastry. Just in case I had a moment when I fancied cooking a pie. This from the woman who has put making pastry on her list of Things That Life Is Too Short To Do and tells everyone that she knows that this is a fact.
I’ve never thought of any of this as particularly strange. But now it bothers me. I worry. How do I know when I am trying to be too prepared? And how do you know when it is time to change those habits? Even if those habits have kept you going for such a long time? More importantly, how do you realise that the habits you have formed are no longer useful? How do you know that it is time to create new ones?
I have spent my life living by the old adage “fail to prepare, prepare to fail”, so it’s a surprise that I can be too prepared. What about “all things are ready if our mind be so” and “prepare while others are daydreaming”. Now I’ve found out that there is a thing called ‘over-preparation’. Who knew?
To find out more, I have turned to the best self-help advice I can find (Google) and I have discovered that just enough preparation is good but that too much can drive you to a standstill. First, here are some of the great things about preparation. It helps you to improvise and think on your feet. It provides you with knowledge to enable you to create coping strategies. You learn resilience and an understanding that even when the worst does happen you can find the way through it.
There does seem to be a line though between not enough preparation and too much. Too much preparation can paralyse you into not doing anything. It can make you afraid to make mistakes. What if I have done all of this and it still doesn’t work? Then you lose all your momentum to do something and the opportunity passes you by. “Over-preparation is the foe of inspiration”. Apparently.
The habits we have provide us with structure. Sticking to good habits help us. “Success is the sum effort of small efforts, repeated day-in, and day-out”. Think about good eating habits and getting into the habit of exercising every day.
We are taught that doing things a little and often can really help us. The internet is full of lists of the ‘Habits of Successful People’ and the ‘100 Things That Successful People Do’. There is book after book of this stuff. You know the habits; be organised, attend to your personal care, rise early, make an action list and on and on and on. How many times have you been given those and tried to follow them? Even Barrack Obama tells us that in order to help us to make the big decisions that we have to make every day, doing other, less meaningful, things habitually, helps us to increase the head space that we have to think about the big stuff.
What I realise now is that the habits that I have so carefully crafted and that get me through every day have become restrictive. They don’t have a lot of use in my life as it is. I wouldn’t say that I feel trapped by them but I do think maybe it is time that I found a means of escaping some of them.
When you put my having a chicken and a packet of puff pastry in context, I don’t think it makes me crazy. I’m not causing anyone any harm to anyone by doing them. I make sure that I have stocked up the freezer. I don’t have to worry if endless people turn up on the doorstep wanting chicken and tomato tarts. However, the fact that they don’t turn up on mass wanting to be fed makes me think that it is time to redirect my preparation and make new habits. Habits that are slightly more relevant to my life as it is now rather than it has been for the past 15 years.
It was pointed out to me recently, even if it snows, I am close enough to the nearest M&S Food Hall to walk to it and buy the chicken. I can even get a chicken that is pre-prepared or cooked, no matter who needs to be fed. My kids are no longer tiny. At a push, can feed themselves beans on toast if they are hungry and I’m not around. It’s time to face facts. Life has changed and my habits can now get the upgrade I deserve them to have. As for preparation, maybe it is time for a bit more spontaneity and the odd takeaway. And so The Emergency Chicken – the Summer Sequel begins without a chicken in the freezer….
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