My mood ring would be green with envy if I were wearing one right now. There is a family in our community who very recently set off on an adventure for a few months in South Africa. You can follow their journey and get jealous with me if you'd like.
My enviousness is entirely unrelated to envying their travel - because I love to travel, too. No, that part is an obvious envy, so it can remain unsaid. I'm jealous of the ability to homeschool their two girls. The mother admits to the challenges that homeschooling poses, and they're using curriculum from our school, but I'm talking about the ability to present an opportunity for learning that this trip is offering.
There are two-sides to me as a mother. One is the mother that I actually am - living, breathing, in the flesh. The other is the mother that I am in my head. The one that has absolutely no follow-through. That's the side that I'm thinking of here and my jealousy for someone to actually do great things makes me want to try harder.
If you go to their site, you will see a field guide as one of the tabs. There are pictures and identifications of various critters and it totally reminded me of why I bought a book on birds when we moved into our house. I wanted to identify all the birds that live and roam in the trees that surround us. There are so many of them! I must have gotten the book at least three or four years ago thinking as a summer project we would do this. Nope. Never did.
Or what about that book on space? No, not that either, though I absolutely love our new telescope and would like to explore the universe myself, even if it doesn't turn out the way I had initially envisioned it. Or the plant books that I got when we went to Hawaii - thinking that we'd learn about all the flora over there. Ideas, all of them. Actions, none.
Getting opportunities can be as simple as opening your eyes to what is right in front of you. I can create opportunities without even trying, but doing something about them is much harder. I have been given a wonderful opportunity recently to write full time. I've stopped working to spend more time with my family and right away I started another novel. Then stalled. I kick myself every time I think about how much time I've NOT written anything. I have wonderful excuses, too, like needing to clean up or Christmas and stuff like that, but they're just excuses. I need to harness some latent ability to follow-through and then DO it.
2 comments:
You can do it.
And as much as I really would like to, I could never homeschool my kids. I'd get distracted and forget to give them tests or make their book reports due, and before you know it, the kids would all be failing.
In my mind it always goes like in the movie Blast From The Past. Brendan Fraser grows up to be such a good, smart guy (and a great dancer!)
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