Life of luxury

Snack time topic: the Big Issue and homelessness 

Anyone who dares suggest my life as a home-ed parent is easy should try getting up and doing their 'full time' job from the moment they wake, then spend every 'break' still working, their lunch time working, their commute working and cooking their evening meal (still) working. Oh and then there's the evenings where you are thinking about working, planning and preparing (and sometimes stressing about) work.

My life and work are synchronous, Mr Onions takes a very similar approach to his paid employment. This is how our life is and we (mostly) like it; I will not, however, take any crap off people who think it's 'easy'! ;-)

My comfort zone

I'm trying out Superbetter after watching Jane McGonigal's TED talk. The concept is cute - a Cognitive Behavioural Therapy game to 'level up' your life. I'm working on 'Being Awesome' because we all have times when we need a reminder how great we are, right?

picture cred:  Jessica Hagy via Superbetter

My task for today is to write down how I feel about my comfort zone, and I must say I am firmly enmeshed in it at the moment. When the right (or should that be wrong?) mood strikes I usually like to spend a few days avoiding everything and watching too much TV. I think it happens when I spend too long operating at a certain level of intensity, I forget to regulate my introverted need for space and end up fatigued by the world. 

My comfort zone also pops up when there's something that I want to do, but achieving it seems insurmountable. Leaving it takes a special kind of resolve, usually involving a period of absolute solitude (to achieve the thing I need to do but have been avoiding) followed by loud music from my happy list, some sort of exercise and a good natter with family or friends.

Perhaps articulating it will make it easier to see my way out in the future? 

(Whoop - +2 Mental Resiliance, +1 Emotional Resiliance!)

Assessing home educators

Many questions home educators receive have hidden agendas. For example;

"Does anyone have to inspect you?" hides the questions: 

"How can you educate without someone telling you what to do?" 

and;

"How can you be good enough?"

To which my reply ought to be:

"I have a brain, I can figure out the stuff my kid should know. I can read at least as well as an average teacher, I can access the same resources. Most people can do these things. Even if I can't buy books I can request them through my library. I can beg and borrow. You may be surprised to hear that many home educators spend plenty of time considering educational philosophies and honing their approach.

"I continue to educate myself. I have family and friends to whom I am accountable and I trust myself to make choices for my family. I work damn hard to achieve the best for her and no-one has a right to judge my ability or define us by arbitrary numbers made for a system we reject."

...but instead I will continue to smile and shake my head, "no, it's not like school." Because some arguments are still too frighteningly radical to get into out loud.