There is no method to what I do, no discipline, no specific process for getting things done. What I have is a haphazard, willy-nilly, anti-process which generally takes shape in the midst of unrelenting chaos. This fledgling process is weak, like a spindly plant suffering from lack of sunlight that screams a whisper: “Find me, tend to me, nurture me.” I hear the call, but am always too scattered to respond. The walls need painting! The kitchen needs cleaning! The bathrooms, the laundry, the floors, the closets, the children. The children for whom I repeat my mantra, “Let me finish this, and I will be right with you.” It is a form of insanity this business of not being able to complete a thought, unable to follow an idea to its logical conclusion. Let me finish this, and I will be right with you.
My soul has a much louder call. It is angry, almost anguished at times, born of neglect and impatience. “DO SOMETHING!” it shrieks, followed by a slew of obscenities that make me blush. DO something. Do SOMETHING. Anything, before it is too late.
So I run. I run for time. I run for distance. I run for the burn in my lungs and the ache in my legs. I run from my chaos and in to my process, which I find standing at the side of the road, around mile two, patiently waiting. My breathing finds its rhythm, my hands hang loose at my side, my stride becomes long and locked at my hips. I am in my groove, and my process has hopped on board. I have sudden clarity of mind, and I find the logic that escapes me the rest of the day. I know where I am going and what I have to do when I get there, every stride cementing further who, and what I am -- mother, wife, Marine, mother, wife, Marine -- at a pace of six and a half minutes per mile.
Ask me the who and what of me at any other time, and I can not answer. Mother? Wife? Marine? I do not know. They are all part of the whole, none complete without the other, yet strangely disjointed. On a day to day basis the three do not communicate, leaving large gaps between who I am and what I need to be. I fumble around “processless,” disorganized in action and thought. I react, am caught by surprise and am continually dumbfounded by the most ordinary of routine things. I move through my day, vaguely acknowledging the muffled protest coming from my strangled process that struggles to remind me, I must do something else.
I just do not know what.
