I was trying to sum up to someone I had only just met what my life is like. How I am so busy, I feel like I’m running from the moment I get up to the second my head hits the pillow.
“I’m like a… like a… glutton at a smorgasbord!” I exclaimed.
In any given week, this is the sort of spread that greets this homeschooling family:
A homeschooling group we sometimes take part in is going to Lawrence Livermore Labs for a workshop designed just for their kids.- A mom we know offers to teach a group how to make soap from goat’s milk on her beautiful farm.
- Santa Cruz Chamber Players offers a free noon concert at the library featuring the kids’ piano teacher playing music I’d love them to hear and get to know.
- A group of homeschooling kids are putting on a performance of a play we want to see.
- My son has a free class given by the CEO of a company that makes really expensive, amazing 3D modeling software, which he has given the kids at a deep discount.
- Another homeschooling friend is hosting a math circle at her home with a mathematician who excels at getting kids fascinated with math concepts.
- We’re preparing the kids’ films for our homeschool program’s film festival.
- On any given day of the year, we can walk into a redwood forest and learn just by observing.
- Like any family, we have access to “afterschool” lessons in pretty much everything: art, music, sports, theater…
And that’s on top of the things we are supposed to be doing, like starting algebra.
Then there are all of the things that I want to do without my kids: I sing in a chorus, attend workshops in skills I’d like to attain, meet up with other homeschooling parents to trade ideas, and sometimes I even stay home and attack the apparently infinite list of books I’d like to read, and less often, the movies I’d like to see.
I have a friend who started up an adult study group on teaching through multi-media. She asked if I wanted to join. This was my inner dialogue:
Yes! Yes, I want to join!
Hold up, now… Do you have time for this?
Yes — one thing I’ve learned as a parent is that time is infinitely expandable, much like a toddler-size disposable diaper. And this would be fun!
No, you have to be serious about this. You really don’t have enough time for this. You have other things you don’t do because you don’t have time.
Oh, I guess that’s right…
No, I told her. I just can’t. Although it would be fascinating, it’s just not my “thing.”
It’s so easy in this world to get taken in by all of the possibilities that tempt us. Just this morning, I wasted two minutes watching a video of an autistic homeschooled boy dancing on Youtube. My son walked in around the middle of it and looked at me quizzically. “Uh, you’re watching Britain’s Got Talent?”
“Well,” I whined, “He is homeschooled, and, uh, well, he is a good dancer…”
OK, so I was busted. A person as busy as I am has no business watching something she fundamentally doesn’t care about. Think about it: I could have wasted my time watching The Daily Show instead. I could have expanded my horizons!
Well, at least I could have put the breakfast dishes in the dishwasher.
It’s hard not to be a glutton in this world of endless opportunity, but we’re being more successful on that this summer. I spent the morning working on my presentations for the Homeschool Assn. of California conference, and working a bit on a picture book story I came up with. I resisted reading various e-mail lists that I follow, and did a little singing. Altogether a pretty successful day of not feasting on the smorgasbord.
But catch me tomorrow to find out if I’m still so smug when they bring out the chocolate crème brulée!
