I'm taking toast and tea

I hate this feeling: staring at my computer screen on a Sunday night, with not just one but TWO papers due tomorrow morning and having the reality of the fact that procrastination is kicking my butt hit me ONCE AGAIN. Seriously - will I never learn?!?! I've been so uninspired to write these papers. I really don't want to. One is on Shakespeare and film, and the other is on "the world of" Jane Austen. Do I care? No. Frankly, I just don't at the moment.

I think I need Morocco. I'm not good at this whole slow-down-and-enjoy-life bit in America. I have my moments, and I'm striving to be, but a couple weeks in Morocco is enough to slow down my super-speed life and help me reprioritize: Jesus, people. The two big factors of my life. My obsession with grades, my inclination to just assume responsibilities, my insanely debilitating problem of saying "Yes" to everything is balanced by a couple weeks of laughing at myself stumble over Arabic, drinking hot mint tea under the shadow of prickly-pears, eating out of a communal bowl, shopping at five different places to get basic grocery store needs, and lots of dirt and sweat and being the recipient of unequal hospitality. Oh how I lament that I am unable to continue that lifestyle, that attitude, that mindset more than a couple weeks after arriving in the states. I aspire to extend it longer and longer, though, so eventually it will become habitually normal.

I've been perusing airlines trying to find a (st)deal for tickets to Malaga of less than $1000. I don't think it's going to happen. If it does, I see that as a Providential leading to pack a backpack and go.

In other news, I've realized I frequently have conflicting wants. This probably isn't news to anyone who is at all remotely human. I want what I want, but I want more what God wants. I want to know what the next steps in my life are and/or should be, but I also want to learn patience, dependence on God, the ability to more-clearly hear God's still, small voice. Sam mentioned in the message today that we cannot speed up what God's doing in our lives, but we can detrimentally take actions to slow down whatever it is He's trying to convey. It is an undeniable fact that the one thing unchanging about change is its inevitability. I like change. It excites me. The potentials are always cool to think about. But the downside of feeling like I'm perpetually waiting for the ball to drop, or the underlying fear that the change will result in a "lesser" season than the present is certainly present. I don't like that.

It makes me seriously doubt Eliot's assertion that "there will be time..." because sometimes, there just isn't. But then again, the excess of a commodity leads to its decrease in value...

OK, back to Austen and Shakespeare.