Before and After

My very expensive collection of study materials for the bar exam arrived yesterday. Life was different before I heard the UPS guy drop that very heavy box on the porch. I was sitting on the floor, making some simple earrings to try and sell through the store my mom manages, feeling content, creative, the sun shining through the windows, Freckles being amazingly good about not batting around the pearls and iolite rondelles I'd scattered right at cat level. And then I heard that thump. And now everything feels a little more real, my year of easy living feels dangerously close to over, and I've started thinking about all the many many things I kind of thought I wanted to do with this time off that I haven't done. Like learn to sew. And write a book. And figure out what I want out of life.

Because now there's a large pile of study guidees sitting in the corner, by the door, reminding me of what I was, and that if I don't get my act together soon, what I'll have to go back to. Procrastination isn't just for household chores.

As soon as it came, I pulled the box apart searching for the schedule - that list of assignments and lectures that will rule my life until the end of February. When I studied for the California bar I treated the BarBri schedule like a bible, and for once in my life I acted like a fundamentalist. But this time, I have more time, so it will be a little different. BarBri condenses the entire formal study schedule into a 6 week program. So if I followed the program exactly, I wouldn't have to start until sometime around New Year's eve. But since I have the time to do so, I'm going to start a little earlier, stretch it out a little longer, so that those first two months of 2008 aren't quite as all consumingly all law all the time. Because . . . to be honest, I don't do all law all the time. That's kind of why my last job didn't work out so well.

Yesterday afternoon, all I was consciously avoiding was delivering a gift basket to a neighbor and scrubbing my bathroom. Now I've got a stack of books reminding me of all the other things I've been avoiding all year, and will probably continue to avoid, knowing me, until they refuse to be ignored any more.