Enjoy and Bless

Podcast Transcript:

I’ve tried to record this episode several times, and I keep getting tripped up with my mind going different directions or feeling like I’m forgetting to include something I meant to say. And I’m needing to remind myself that my intention with this podcast isn’t to be perfect and polished. It’s to put my voice out there, to share thoughts, to share perspective, and so here we go. I’m gonna try to just get this out there.

In my last post, I said that I was gonna share what our daily rhythm looks like this fall in this season of our home education. And then I realized we don’t really have a daily rhythm as the “school year” has begun. Our new schedule has a lot of free time. It’s a very unschool schedule. And at the start here, it’s been rough. I gotta tell you, it’s been rough.

With so much unstructured time, that has been filled with a lot of sibling bickering, complaining, “I’m bored,” messes around the house. It’s been a challenge. But we’re getting our footing. I had kind of an inspiration—-which whenever I have inspiration like this I always credit God. God gave me a way to think about things that has been helpful.

I noticed that the freedom and the open endedness of our days was…I was like, we’ve got to fix something. We’ve got to shift something. And one small little shift has really made a difference.

And that was to think about, okay, so we have this free time that we get to use how we want. But we’re having trouble figuring out what do I want to do? What are my options? And what I landed on—of course, you could come up with a million variations of this—but for our family, what I landed on is when my kids come to me, “I don’t know what to do.” I suggest, hey, have you read something? Have you written something? Have you created something, and have you accomplished something? So the first 2 are kind of obvious. Like, you know, everyone has a book that they’re reading and they can pick that up or several books. Writing, we decided to pick up just some basic composition notebooks, and I’m encouraging my older 2 to write down anything they want. They can write down thoughts about their day. They can write down quotes from books they’re reading, favorite Bible verses. I’m encouraging them to write down the books that they’re reading, so we have kind of a record of all that they’ve read this year. So reading, writing, and then creating something could be, you know, building with Legos. It could be gardening, baking, any art. The girls like to make jewelry—we do like bead bracelets and things. Yeah, so create something and then accomplish something. What I mean by that is kind of like chores around the house, like maybe there’s laundry to fold or you notice there’s dishes on the table that can be put away. So just, I guess you could say like work—just something that you can see that needs to be done. You can get it done and feel like, hey, I did something productive today.

So anyway, that was the inspiration God gave me that has really helped us feel less unsettled. It’s a little grounding to know, okay, I have this open time; what are some good ways to use that time?

All right, I’m continuing this line of thought on a different day because I ran out of time to finish when I was recording before. I’ve been thinking about this framework for our days. Read, write, create, accomplish. And I suppose you could say that is our daily rhythm or that is a daily rhythm we’re aiming for.

And I’m wondering about the last one accomplish. I’m wondering if what I really mean is contribute. Any way that you could be of service to the family, to the community, a way that you can contribute. That’s a big theme that I want to come back to. When I think about unschooling, I feel that sometimes the mindset can revolve too much around like, what does the child want to do? Pursuing interests, but at the expense of not considering the fact that you are part of a larger community and it’s important to be a part of it, to consider other people’s needs and desires and how you might be of service to others, how you can contribute and bless others. That’s the whole goal here, right? Enjoy our life together and be a blessing to others, and often we can be a blessing to others through the things that we enjoy in life.

All right, I think I’ll end things there. Our new daily rhythm. I guess maybe that’s what I’ll call it. That’s our daily rhythm: Read, write, create, and contribute. I’ll keep mulling over that and see how it fits and what I think about it, what needs adjustments.

And my next post, I will share our weekly rhythm, weekly schedule. Stay tuned to hear more about what we include in our week and you’ll get to learn more about my kids’ particular interests which I hope should be fun. All right, thank you for listening! Let’s keep looking for ways that our joy can be a blessing to others.