Task #1: Completed

In July of '06 I picked up and moved to Texas having just finished at BYU. Just south of Austin is the small town of Kyle. This is where I was kindly put up by my best friend's parents, Larry and Cheryl Kruzie, in their double wide trailer sitting on a giant, 400-acre chunk of land affectionately referred to by friends of the family as "the Kruzie compound." Michelle (my best friend) and her small family were living in a shed (literally a tattered, wooden SHED) across the field from the double wide. Without a job or care in the world, I spent all my time with Michelle that first month I was there. I could shuffle across the field for breakfast in my pajamas, my hair all disheveled, or stroll over in the middle of the night to chat. I was around her more than I had been as roommates sharing the same room... and I learned something about Michelle. I always knew Michelle was crazy about getting things done right away, but in a setting where she had responsibilities as a wife and mother, this quality seemed chronically exacerbated. I can't find a word for this specific attribute, but it is the dramatic opposite of procrastination.

Examples:

1.) Michelle reads in a parenting book that kids can be potty trained beginning at 18 months old. The day little Riley hit 18 months, Michelle had Riley in regular cotton underwear.

2.) Michelle and I start conjuring up ideas for Riley's Halloween costumes one day while loafing around watching TV. She thinks Ursula would be "so cute," imagining vinyl fabric for shiny tentacles. The very next day she shows up with a bag of fabric and camps out on my bed with a book, looking quite expectant. I look at her quizzically and she responds, "Well, don't you have time to do it right now? What else do you have going on today?" I wasn't prepared with an answer and so I started sewing.

3.) I come home late at night after a really good date with a guy I had known at BYU who, unbeknown to me, happened to move to Austin just months before I got there. After asking me a lot of questions about how I feel, she is sure that I need to tell him and that I need to tell him immediately. "Michelle, it's raining. He lives an hour away. And it's the middle of the night." "I don't care. You'd want to know, right? Where is your phone? I'll text him." Minutes pass. "Oh, good," she announces as she's reading a newly received text message from my phone. "K, he's going to meet you off the exit by Chili's past William Cannon. Hurry and get ready so you can go!" (To her credit, "the boy" and I had our first kiss that night and were inseparable from that time forward... until we weren't. And ironically, shortly after our break-up, that Chili's burnt down.)

You get the picture. She's insane. She is soooo motivated by task "completion" and checking off her "to do" list that that alone serves as it's own reward. But it's not a feeling I can't say I don't relate to and seek out. What feels better than striking through a task documented in my planner? (Okay, a lot of things. But for rhetoric's sake, let's leave it at that.) I have a fetish for planning, making lists, scheduling, etc. There is a driving need to feel assured that progress is happening. General, non-specific gains are less encouraging than tangible tokens of forward motion focused in a specific direction. When we feel ourselves slacking, we can point to the "completed" and be reassured. But with me, I don't have a finishing spirit like Michelle. I'm content that something is on the agenda. She's not content until it's off. I'd love to change this about myself and become a finisher.

Even though I love planning, it too often ends there. I remember in my days at BYU getting weeks into the semester and feeling like there was no way I would be able to get through all the reading. I would then figure out how many total pages I had to read and divide that by days left in the semester. It seemed doable! Comforted that catastrophe was averted, I took off to hang with friends and would then fall further behind. I'd be better off just jumping in and doing all I can, not stopping to figure out the logistics of how.

One problem is that I plan too big. My marathon training is a great example of this. I started running in March and felt totally justified in putting myself on a more intense regiment by May. Big mistake. I ignored the warnings of friends and kept pushing. It led to injury one week and burn out a few weeks later. I finally surrendered to a "novice" running schedule and am now only hoping to finish the race. (I'm slower and feel more fatigued than ever these days but I hope the lighter running schedule will solve that... and maybe keep my appetite at bay.)

Aside from running and chores/tasks, progress is hard to measure. I'm reminded of Elder Bednar's conference talk about brush strokes on a painting. He compared life to a painting and that each day we add a few brush strokes. They don't seem to add up to much but when we come to die and are able to step back and look at our painting, we'll see what our life work was really all about.

A side note: Larry and Cheryl Kruzie finally built a home on their property after a season of poverty as they worked to get a family business off the ground. They are now the successful owners of Texas Old Town.