You're always coming from somewhere. That's the thing, isn't it? You're always in transit, always arriving with the last place still on you. The call you just finished, the email you sent from the parking lot, the child you dropped off while already thinking about the meeting. You walk into rooms still shedding context. You sit down still landing, trying to arrive in your own body at the same time you're arriving in the room.
You're not late, exactly. You're on time in the way that means you made it, just barely, with nothing to spare. The coffee you meant to drink is in the cup holder going cold. The article you meant to read is still open on your phone. You meant to have a minute to think before this, to collect yourself, to not be the woman who slides in breathing hard with her bag still open. And yet here you are again.
You tell yourself this is temporary. This season, this project, this phase. Once the kids are older. Once the promotion comes through. Once things settle down. But the settling never comes, because the way you build your days doesn't allow for settling. The system regenerates itself every morning, and every morning you run it again.
The woman at the gate.
You've seen her. She walks in with nothing trailing behind her. No apology, no flurry, no visible evidence of what she was doing before. She sits, she's settled, she's there. Her coffee is half-finished, which means she had time to buy it and drink it, which means she had time, period. You wonder what her life is like that she gets to move through the world this way. Fewer responsibilities, probably. More help. Some situation you don't have access to.
But then you learn she has the same things you have. The job, the children, the house, the obligations. She's not operating with more hours or fewer demands. She's just building differently, and the difference is so simple it's almost embarrassing.
She doesn't stack transitions.
What stacking looks like.
Your calendar is a series of blocks pushed edge to edge: meeting ends at 2:00, and the next one starts at 2:00, school pickup at 3:15
