Wednesday, November 30, 2011

What'cha Doing?

A couple of weeks ago a friend wrote a blog post has stayed with me. It was one of those post that kind made me reevaluate what was going on with the beastie's home school day. She was describing how being an unschooler places some responsibility on the parent to model what one does in a day. In other words, unschooling ought to make a person look closely at how they spend their whole day. And this really hit a nerve because frankly I am a lazy type unless I have a lot on my plate. Being in graduate school kept me always moving. I was constantly reading, writing, discussing, etc. It was pleasurable and I loved it but what little down time I had was valued and used wisely. This schedule also kept me on the straight and narrow with the beasties as well.We didn't have time to catch up or to  put off a project until later.

Now that I am essentially freed of these time constraints. I do nothing. Seriously. I spent a lot of time on Facebook playing really inane games. My friend's post made me realize that I am squandering this precious time that has been given to me, and that the beasties are watching me squander this opportunity. In fact, the beasties are COPYING ME by becoming hideously addicted to computer games and pushing other pursuits from their minds. This is not how I want to live my life. There are so many things I want to learn and to do.

So I made a list:
learn Spanish
brush up so I can pass a French reading test
write a kick ass paper on the comic book "Priest" with lots of great monster theory
revise my thesis into a couple of articles
read THE WHOLE OUTLANDER series. Oh yeah!
knit a sweater

This is really just a bit of what I want to do but I need to do it. I need to start using my time in a wise way so that I can do the things that really give me pleasure instead of the things I am addicted to. And I need to do this not just for me but for the beasties.

2 comments:

Jennifer Welborn said...

You know she came out with 2 more recently. "An Echo in Bone" (which I'm reading now) and the just released "The Scottish Prisoner." I can't wait to read it!

Lolabola* said...

I can't believe you had to put the Outlander series on the list. It was way worse than a computer game addiction for me. My life was put on hold once I started, prompting B to enter the room and frequently bemoan "oh no, this is my worst nightmare".