goals

I want to apologise ahead of time for not having any recent photos to share with you. We haven’t been doing much work this month, mostly because it is so cold – Winter has officially arrived in the desert, and we spend much of our time indoors cuddled under blankets and playing.

Winter has always been my inner work time – it is a time when I spend most of the days in deep thought, considering how I will make the coming new year a better one. I have finally met one of my personal goals – to quit smoking (though not completely, but I am down to maybe half a cigarette a day) – and I have met one of my homeschooling goals (to stick with it longer than a single month). Sun has a single page to finish and then a title, and he will be finished with his first Main Lesson Book. Moon has just a few more alphabet practice pages to finish and she will be finished! I am so proud of my little Stars for sticking with me through this arduous task of finding a rhythm – and we aren’t done yet!

Rhythm has always been a struggle for me. As a child, I needed some sort of schedule, so my mother posted one she had made in my room – it was written for me to do in order to meet her needs. I don’t like schedules. I like predictability, but not the strictness of having to do things at specific times. The thing with rhythm is that it isn’t a schedule, not in how most people view it. It is more of a flow. I have been spending so much time considering how our days flow, and I have realised that they really do not. They are choppy, at best, and completely disastrous at worst. So, one of my goals before the new years begins is to sit down and more deeply consider our rhythm and how to better make the days flow, instead of consistently damaging our little boat.

Sun and I sat down this morning after I woke him up (I guess there was already a tune to the verse I use for wake up, but I made up my own anyway!), and we discussed what rhythm is and how we can add a bit more flow to our days. We decided on Monday – Baking, Tuesday – Tea, Wednesday – Painting, Thursday – Handwork, and Friday – Nature Walk. There are other things that we need to consider, like going to the Library and the Farmer’s Market (which is always on Thursdays here)  – but I think that these things can be added once we establish a solid flow with the basics. These are all afternoon activities, either when HL comes home from school (on Fridays, specifically, because she has a standing appointment that gives us about an hour for a nature walk), so we will still have our Main Lessons in the morning, Moon first and then Sun after snack.

The end of December is sneaking up on me, and I don’t really feel like I am ready to start again. But I am getting there. I still have so much more to do, or at least it feels like that. My biggest goal is to just keep going, to take it one day at a time, and work on helping my children foster a love for learning. This journey has required so much patience from me, and I am not the most patient person – but, I have been working on that. I think perhaps, were I to apply a single word to 2018 to follow and bring more into my life, it would be patience. It is a daily work, and I have a long way to go until I am where I want to be, for myself and my children.

I have been considering sharing some of our journey on a vlog, but I have yet to even make the first video. Perhaps that will be something I work on in the coming New Year. I cannot wait to share photos of Sun and Moon’s MLBs. I am so proud of both of them for all the work they have done so far. Thank you all so much for being here with us!