School of Hard Heads

Academia is hard because it is an artificial environment that intrudes into the real. It consumes my life.

I don't want it to, so when I'm done with this, I'm getting out. When I'm done. It's not as easy as it sounds--I have only a few weeks left and I can't see my way past them. But we've been over that.

What am I going to do when I don't have school as an excuse anymore? I'm serving my Tulsa church, and I love that I can do that. I'm trying to the best of my poor ability to be available to friends in need, but I'm inadequate, and I know that. Meanwhile I throw the last few minutes of my day towards Christ and I think it's the best I can do, because I'm just so busy. My busyness, examined, yields a different record of the day, the remains of which are idled (idoled) elsewhere; the between-times of tasks that I never quite seem to accomplish.

I've found my need for grace to be overwhelmingly more than I once assumed. I've found His willingness to cover me to be beyond the limits of my presumptions. And I've taken advantage of that.

Where's the line between rejoicing in the ever-presence of Grace, and abusing it? Between security and complacency?

I've spent years and years in school and now, emerging, I'm confronted with my own staggering ignorance.

More than a Mile

So...I didn't get ten pages written. More like eight.

BUT this morning at the park I ran for a mile and a half. I don't think I've ever done that before. And I'm not even in pain. Much.

Off to babysit for the day: I will have to bring a book to read, in case Little Man deigns to nap. Laptop battery and adapter coming this week! Soon I will be a normal computer-toting person, able to do my work on-the-go. Instead of precariously balanced on a chair in my living room, hoping I don't jostle the frayed and cantankerous cord as it juts awkwardly from the socket. Oh get here soon! Neither rain nor snow nor gloom of night shall stay these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds!

(that was from memory; I hope it is correct.)

By Saturday night I will have doubled my current thesis pagery. Ready? GO.

Accountability

I have six weeks to write approximately 70 pages, grade approximately 100 papers and projects, watch five films, and read an innumerable amount of essays and novels.

And then I will be out of school.

*hyperventilation*

I haven't decided yet if my regularity in working out is really just closet procrastination of my scholarly tasks. Regardless, tomorrow I'm going to get up, do my three miles, come home and write this thesis. By this time tomorrow I'm going to have ten viable pages.

*checks clock*

10.54 pm it is. Jesus, take the wheel.

The Best Thing:

1. Coming home after a soccer game, victorious, to an apartment freshly cleaned.
2. Alt. def. Anything with Hugh Jackman (Exception: Kate and Leopold).

I want today to be over now. Can't time do one of those speed-up things it likes to do sometimes?

Susceptible

These days chick flicks do not have any impact on my somewhat downplayed romantic side. Netflixed episodes of Bones, however--

My hair grows fast.

That is, quickly.

After cutting off about 18 inches a few weeks ago it's already tickling past the tops of my ears and swooping over my eyebrows. I'm enjoying the change, though.

There are many changes right now, and more to come in rapid sequence. In the first place, I'm working out consistently and on purpose and under no motivation but my own for the first time perhaps ever. I'm apprehensive about putting it up here because I am (always have been) just slightly superstitious and I can't help but think that bragging is just about the surest jinx there is--but it's true. Even last week when I felt the reverse of good I still managed to do three miles twice. It's not impressive working out--I'm not training for a marathon (idea?), I'm actually just walking (rapidly) the three-mile trail at Lafortune or doing three miles on the treadmill at school. The point is, I'm doing it.

I've always hated running/speed walking/jogging because 1. it's uncomfortable 2. I look ridiculous and 3. I could never focus. Seriously, any time I tried I would get so caught up in how hard it was to breathe and how much it hurt that I'd just give up. Aiming for a set distance never helped--I'd talk my self out of it--and the same thing with a set time. For a brief while one collegiate summer I tried doing that walk-run challenge--where you build up to running through increased intervals on a walk. Over the course of the summer I think I actually did it...three times? So much for that.

These days, if I want to see if I can run, I've figured out how to do it--by songs. I recently inherited an iPod nano. It's changed the workout process. Step 1. Select playlist. Step 2. Walk. Fast. Step 3. Start running at the beginning of a song. Run til the song ends. Step 4. Back to a fast walk. Repeat. The result? I am running. I don't particularly like it, but I can, and that's the difference. No significant weightloss, according to my clothes, but it's only been a few weeks. On a good week (two out of the three so far) I walk/run four days and play racquetball and soccer one day each, respectively. Soccer could soon up to two days a week-- and I keep telling myself I'm going to walk on the weekends. It just hasn't happened yet.

The first few post-workouts are the best. Normally they're the only ones I experience--the first ones. A few weeks in and I don't feel as smug or as exhilarated as I did the first time. I feel leaden and slightly pained. I intend to continue (how I feel, I find, matters less than what I do).

Another change--I'm working on my Master's thesis. This means I'll be out of school soon--very soon. Out of school. The phrase is as yet hollow and meaningless. But not for long.

When I am done with school I know exactly what I am going to do--read all the pointless books I own and NOT THINK CRITICALLY about them.

Who am I kidding. I can't help that.

Some things will not change.