Sometime early in 2023, I was at Costco and found a four pound bag of dried cranberries at a good price, so I bought them. I was pretty pleased with my purchase until I shared my news with the rest of my family at home, only to find out that nobody else really liked dried cranberries. After thinking about it, I realized that while I liked dried cranberries, I only used them in salads, and even then, it was only a small handful at a time.

For some months, the bag was unopened in the cupboard. Inertia had set in: I wasn’t sure how I was going to use all these cranberries. Once I opened them, it was going to take a concerted effort, and it took some time to get ready for the challenge. After all, a four pound bag is a lot of dried cranberries.

I didn’t eat cranberries every day, but whenever I thought about it, I included a handful in my salads, my oatmeal, and wherever they might taste good, like a quick bread. They weren’t used up quickly, and for a long time, the bag showed little signs of my progress or efforts. Today, though, I noticed that I can see the bottom of the bag, and even though the “sell by” date is past (it was December 5, 2023), I think I’ll have them finished up in another week or two.

Initially, I was overwhelmed with the prospect of eating four pounds of dried cranberries. But when I stopped dwelling on the outcome (an empty bag) and simply used the cranberries to enhance whatever I was eating in the moment, I made progress toward that outcome, one handful at a time.