I count down to things.

Actually, I count down to just about everything.

It's part of feeling the weight and whirl of time, even if I am helpless against it. I keep track compulsively and I try to trap bits of sand-time into the cracks of my life that will fail if they do not receiver added support soon. But time is a slippery, trickling thing; the larger the crack, the sooner it will require more sand so keep the cold and the dark out.

I have slowed my count down so that I have space in my head for other things. (It is very difficult to spend time wisely and actually build with the sand you have, if you get hypnotized or paralyzed by its constant departure.) Still, the count is there.

For graduation, it is not so much in days that I am counting, nor weeks, nor hours.

11 more required chapel attendances
10 more exams
( I feel like there should be 9 more of something, but the countdown within the countdown was incidental)
8 more papers
7 more chapters of Grudem to be read
6 more required textbooks to finish...

Anyway, you get the idea. It's not a perfect system, but it feeds my need to feel like I am moving in a definitive direction and it keeps me focused on what remains to be done while holding 'senior-itis' at bay.

And then what? And then I hope to be a better person. I hope to write. I hope to grow plants. I hope to stretch and take care of this body I've been neglecting. And I hope to learn things that no university can teach me. Like how to bake pies or convert certain recipes into allergy sensitive goodness. I hope to explore a few waterfalls and lay down in at least a few fields with a good book...perhaps even some of the books I picked up while I was here in school. I want to have the time to let everything I learned in university change me. And I want to learn to be a better woman.

I hope to learn how to function as an adult with a job and balance all of the things I just mentioned with that.
But mostly, I hope to have time to celebrate having made it farther than I ever actually believed I would... or should. And I hope that if I forget all of the things that I want, writing them here will help ensure that I stumble over them again.

There'll be days like this.

"There are good days and there are bad days."

I find things like this scrawled in my sketch books, in the margins of my science notes, and in other much more illogical places. I used to wake up holding crumpled sticky notes with a faint memory of having such an important thought that it could not wait until morning because, well, what if I let go of such a revelation? I used to wake up with nonsense smeared across my hands because I wrote ...something... on my skin, in the dark, in a fit of desperate trying to remember what it feels like to wonder in the dark at a universe so much bigger but not quite threatening.

Always, when I find them later, I am disappointed by my own simplicity. If I do not keep a careful eye upon  myself, I find the most basic ideas to be revolutionary. I am not just easily amused, I am easily motivated... and just as easily lost.

These fragments

These fragments genuinely console me when I find them, before the disappointment and the intellectualism kick in. There are good days and there are bad days.

I have to remember that sometimes.

Those bad days can be so shocking that I forget that I ever had a good day. Those bad days can come in swarms so thick that I forget that they had a beginning. Those bad days can last so long that I forget what it feels like not to be... heavy.

But those good days...

Those good days can end so abruptly that I wonder at their truth. Those good days can get so comfortable that I forget I am being allowed to rest and will be expected to leave. Those good days can restore so much that I forget what I was taught in the dark and broken places.

There are bad days and there are good days and it is no small thing to hold onto both.

Oh Friday. You feel like a hug.

I wanted to put up something pretty. My blog has been all words and far too few pictures. This is a throw back to the days when all I was armed with was my Powershot A80, whom I still miss. His name was Evelyn. I'm sure this dates to 2006 or something when I was younger and still convinced I could learn 6 or so languages in the next ten (ish) years. It's ok to let some dreams go after all.