Beginning Again

I spent most of the summer unpacking and setting up our new house and working on recovering my fitness and strength. The kids have been hanging out with friends, going to the pool a lot, and reading. M has been traveling a ton, working, and running. Max went to an ultimate frisbee camp with his friend and loved it so much. Laurel went to two weeks of CIT camp with the Girl Scouts and also loved it. Marko did not go to a camp but spent a lot of time with his friends and exploring our neighborhood on foot. Many things are going very well for us. 

It's time to launch the new school year! As always, this is a soft start for us, and begins with talking about goals (and yes I count this work as 'school'). I ask the kids what they want to be able to do or know next year at this time, and then we spend a fair amount of time teasing out what it would look like. This year each kid is making a list of books they want to read. We will go Brave Writer style with one book a month, and assign chapters to encourage slow and close reading. I'm hoping to organize book clubs with family and friends for most of the months, to occur virtually as well as in person. There is also a lot of interest in economics so I ordered Kyla Scanlon's book In This Economy, and we will read that together along with her Substack. CrashCourse and Khan academy will also probably occupy a fair amount of our 'school' days. The most exciting thing is that we will be going to Mexico, where we will focus on learning conversational Spanish and Latin American history. Laurel will be using the Help for High School essay writing book from Julie Bogart, and I ordered a book of essays for us to read, Breakfast on Mars and 37 Other Delectable Essays. We are also getting more involved in the Outdoor Serve Guides scouting, which is a great framework for mastering all sorts of practical and civic skills. 

I read two books this summer that had a big impact on me. The first one was Stolen Focus by Johan Hari, which gets into the systemic reasons we all seem to be struggling with attention span these days. The second one was the Five Resets by Aditi Nerukar, which was a basic self-help sort of book, not particularly revelatory, but extremely well organized, at least to my brain. I paged through it in one sitting at the library, then took it home and took notes. I'm just hungry for a little direction right now, I guess. Anyway, I've noticed my attention slipping the last few years. Many of my peers complain about this as well, but  often attribute it to perimenopause or middle age or stress. Many people talk about their kids struggling with attention. My own kids complain about it. We try to exercise and take magnesium supplements or avoid sugar or meditate. But I wondered if it could be the rewiring of my brain in response to notifications on my phone. I deleted Facebook and Instagram, turned off all app notifications, set my phone to dim/sleep mode between 7pm and 7am and blocked Reddit. Now I'm trying out monotasking. I stopped listening to podcasts or audiobooks while I cook or clean. I stopped reading while I eat. And this is going to sound kind of weird, but I stopped thinking while I walk, especially if I was taking a walk because I felt stressed or angry. Instead I started saying a mantra, Yes, yes, thank you, thank you. It astonished me how quickly this simple phrase made me feel better, how disruptive a mantra is to anger or hurt. It's Buddhism 101. But I can feel my attention shifting, my memory improving. Exercising personal control is not the solution exactly. Tech companies, like all corporations, need to be held more accountable for the impact they have on people's health and well being. Lots of money can be made while still putting people first. But personal self control is a lever we can pull right now to reclaim a small part of our brains that have been altered by our environment. 

So I guess I'm also going to bring some mindfulness into homeschooling. Slow things down and lean into deep mastery. Provide lots of opportunities for rest or quiet minds in between work to allow things to simmer and gel. Get off the FOMO train and stop worrying that we're going to fall behind those who say they are doing more. I'm all in on accountability and helping us discern when we truly understand something or know how to do something. Assessment is key for this. But we will have to work on our attention to make this a reality.