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.