...............maybe...

There comes a point in every semester where the workload teases, rolling up its sleeves and getting ready to start kicking me around. Right before this happens, I hit a lull...wherein I wonder...what the heck am I doing and WHYYYYYYY?!?!?!

No. I'm not at that point. I mean, end-of-term-itis is here. But it's sneaky. I am just uncreatively staring at the textbook in front of me, wishing for the drive to actually take in the interesting things it wants to tell me. Amazed at the process by which we take in information, turn it around in our brains based on our own experiences and then, regurgitating with our own unique flavour (hopefully not reeking of real bile...), we spit out what we've learned in a blob of text on a page (or a cloud of words in the air) which shimmer and shine briefly before vanishing into the whirlwind glacier that is academia.

This is not my only existence; I need to remember this.

A pile of beads sits in the corner of my room, winking at me. My bookshelf is overflowing with books I'd been intending to read...for fun...someday. The washing machine downstairs is eagerly awaiting the next sock meal I will offer to it tonight. My journal is half-full of little one-liners, most of which say something like "IOU a lot of words!" (The other half is still empty...waiting for all those words...) Facebook teases me with just-out-of-reach snippets of friends' exciting existences---there is more to life than this. It's just happening elsewhere right now.

If I didn't have piles of this work to do forever in the future...who would I be? I love learning, I love this season, and I love the people I'm learning with. But at the same time...I'm pretty sure I sign myself up for school because it puts perimeters and limits around what I can and cannot do. The time I can spend with people. The amount of time and money I can give away to people who need it more than I do. The thoughts I can spare, for what comes next after this semester, after this degree. "The sky's the limit" has always been such a freaky phrase, I feel a lot better when the sky's obstructed with comforting walls...silly!

(Actually. I have been taking in some of this reading: The example that Cranmer uses in his Preface to the Great Bible in 1540 is that probably, if there's a town of people near the North Pole, surrounded by hills which obstruct the sun, and the hills suddenly disappear and allow them their first glimpse of the sun, these townspeople might just be freaked out or offended by the bigness and brightness of this yellow ball of fire. The analogy refers to the fact that people who aren't accustomed to having 24/7 access to a Bible of their own and in their own language might not take advantage of this access because they're not used to it. "And therefore I can well think them worthy pardon, which at the coming abroad of Scripture doubted and drew back. But such as will persist in their willfulness, I must needs judge, not only foolish, froward and obstinate, but also peevish, perverse and indurate."

...haha...)

This busyness is a kind of selfishness and at the same time a kind of hiding from the real world, and a hiding from myself. Too busy to develop disciplines which will help to uncover some of these silly limits I place on myself. Too busy to really love the many amazing people who are in my life. Now that I recognize this, I spose I better stop being peevish, perverse and indurate!