Outta Time

Have you seen the movie Back to the Future, that mid-80's blockbuster movie with Michael J. Fox and Christopher Lloyd? In it there is a time-traveling DeLorean and its license plate says OUTATIME, a reference to the tricked-out sports car's superpowers.

I realized in a huge pile of emails and to-do lists, tears and frutration yesterday that guess what? I was outta time...outta time to get my finances in order, outta time to get my taxes filed, outta time to get my visa application approved by an African embassy in Washington, D.C., outta time to get my digital camera repaired and my prescriptions refilled and my mosquito net purchased all before next Wednesday morning, February 6, at 7:05 a.m. when my flight was scheduled to leave SFO for JFK for ACC, San Francisco to New York to Accra, the capital of Ghana.

I hate it when I can't pull stuff like this off, I hate it when my powers fail me and my unrealistic sense of what I can and can't do catches up with me and bites me hard, right in the rear. I hate it even when it is not my fault, when it is beyond my control, when it is not the result of sloth or laziness or disorganization on my part but is really just the result of interrelated circumstances, just the result of life.

Was it impossible to think I'd be able to arrive in Berkeley on January 10 and leave three weeks later? No. What it unlikely? Maybe. Did I think I could do it? Of course because I am still learning, and this year is full of many lessons, that I actually cannot do absolutely everything. Do I judge myself harshly for having to say I wasn't ready, I needed more time? Yes. Does that make a lot of sense? No. Was I mad that I had to pay $275 to change my ticket? Of course. In the end does it matter? Really, most likely, not at all.

My intentions have not shifted, my motivation is no less than it was before. I am aware that if I do not receive the significant financial support for which I have applied then just all bets are off, inarguably, because I cannot continue to perform acts of tikkun olam, of repairing the world, on the money I earned tutoring Anglo ex-pat kids a few times a week in Jerusalem when I wasn't busy volunteering as an English teacher in an integrated neighborhood's understaffed public school. It just won't be possible. But until I know about that for sure one way or the other I continue to search the Internet for the best price on mosquito nets, I continue to complete in quadruplicate the Ghanaian immigration forms I will submit once I am able to prove my own financial sufficiency for the time I am there. I was out of time but have given myself an extension--an expensive but necessary one, time is money after all I suppose--and it is my sincerest hope that I will still go to work and live for three months in Africa. Until I am told no, I will persevere in planning on yes. This just means that I have a few more days before I leave to wash my hands under a faucet instead of in a bucket. Nice.