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This blog is almost 20 years old and has mostly been a journal shared with a few people I know from real life who are interested in me enough to keep up. I frequently revisit the archives myself because it's an honest account of where I was or what I thought about at different points in life. Of course, some opinions have evolved over time and I no longer agree with all my hot takes, but there are more than 1,000 posts that document my adventures and parenting, life philosophy and accomplishments, missteps and good and bad luck. I don't put a ton of pictures or links, because I'm not selling anything and clicks don't matter. In recent years, I've come to enjoy the challenge of writing text over telling a story with photos. I guess, even though I'm putting this out there publicly and with my name on it, this is really mostly for me. 

Last spring I deleted my Facebook and Instagram accounts. I loved Facebook. I found it to be a very useful tool for staying in touch with people. I liked to share what I was doing with other people and similar to this blog, I put out thousands of posts. In time, I came to understand that I was generating content for a machine that was serving up dangerous information to people I loved. They logged on to see my cute and adventurous kids and stayed for the propaganda. Most (all?) social media platforms that are free function in this way, farming content from willing users, generating revenue through holding the audience captive. Doesn't matter if the content is true or helpful, and things that induce anger are often the most profitable. 

My social media departure was the result of several factors. First, and most annoyingly, my Instagram account was compromised. Restoring it and keeping it secure became an ongoing challenge. I didn't post very much there, just viewed content about homeschooling and gardening, so that was an easier one to delete. Then my homeschool group opted to move off Facebook and onto the Mighty Network for organizing playdates and so forth. Mighty is a private social platform you pay for, so there are no ads. It's just the content from a specific group of users that you choose. So I didn't need to keep a Facebook account to see which playground we were meeting at. 

My Facebook exit was undramatic. I did not make any sort of announcement, although I did message a few people to get their phone numbers or email addresses. There's a safety measure that holds your deleted account for a few weeks before it asks you if you are really sure. I think most users probably change their minds, but I clicked "I'm sure" and that was that. 15 years of posts and photos gone. At first it just felt liberating. I could control how I viewed media to a larger degree. When I wanted to catch up with a friend I hadn't seen in a while we actually had news to share with each other. Occasionally I get an email from someone who wants to share an event or promote something, so I know that people who really want to find me, can. Mostly it just shifted the burden to actually go to events or hang out with friends in person if I wanted to stay connected with them. I sent more letters in the mail. 

Our family was in a big transition stage at that point. Our next door neighbors and close friends had also moved away when we moved from our house into the apartment. The apartment complex was largely inhabited by a generation of people who didn't even seem comfortable saying hello when passing in the stairwell. I basically had to get in the car and drive somewhere just to talk to someone outside of my immediate family! A very big change! I was used to calling out the kitchen window to ask the neighbor for some dishwasher soap or an egg if I ran out, and getting together for tea or beer on the porch most days. We've since moved to a new house, and are starting to meet neighbors. I imagine in another ten years I'll have new close friends here. Life is an ongoing cycle of relationships expanding and contracting.

One surprising thing was that I didn't miss the content very much, but I craved the act of scrolling, and even a year later it feels compelling in a weird way, especially when I'm tired or overwhelmed. I have a Substack account but found the endless scroll too enticing if the app was installed. Instead I opt to just read whatever I'm subscribed to as it lands in my email inbox. I support a few writers and it feels more like reading a magazine. Another observation is that I am experiencing the world a little bit differently. Like we're all at the same party but I'm the designated driver. I'm out of the loop on trends and hot takes, for sure. I never even had a Tiktok account, but Facebook was sort of a conduit for reels from many sources, and I was surprised at how much exposure I had to all platforms via just one. It's definitely made me think about how my kids are experiencing apps and smart phones and social media.

You know, with everything that's going on right now....

That's become a common catch phrase, sprinkled into conversations, accompanied by a hand gesture towards the sky. Obviously people are carrying on, because what else are you going to do? ICE has been very active in our region lately, and this week they came around to our co-op and had a brief encounter with a group of kids out on a walk with some teachers, including one of my kids. My kids are at little personal risk especially if they "comply with law enforcement" which is kind of a gross way of describing the act of doing nothing while you watch someone get snatched up by anonymous armed and masked men in unmarked rental vehicles and ferreted off to who-knows-where for who-knows-how-long. In this case, nobody was taken in front of them, although a young person at a bus stop a few blocks away was not so lucky. He was not the only one to be arrested that day in the neighborhood. Sometimes arrests make the news, and they might even publish a Go Fund Me. But these highlighted stories are a drop in the bucket compared to what neighborhood watch groups are documenting. 

It turns my stomach to think about all of it.

Sarah Menkedick wrote this essay and it's long and emotional, a beautifully written account of a terrible topic. The news cycle is bonkers and I know it's hard to find reliable sources or make sense of what is real and what is click bait. That's why it's important to look around your own city, to take a minute to listen to a woman you met at a playgroup, whose kid you shared a snack with one time. Real humans of the news cycle, if you will. Obviously there are calls to action we all must respond to, but I think the very first step is bearing witness, listening, acknowledging, and believing, even when it is painful to hear.

Home School High School

I did not expect to be homeschooling this long, and things do change a bit in the teenage years. But here we are and it's honestly working out fairly well. 

The first and biggest benefit is our ability to prioritize physical, mental and spiritual health. Tired people cannot regulate emotions very well and teens are even more susceptible as they go through puberty. When things are going off the rails, we revisit this and focus on it until it's regulated and then honestly, many problems clear themselves up quite easily. And if I'm ever in a panic about how all this is going, I can usually reorient myself with some sleep and healthy practices. Either it turns out I was worried about nothing, or the solution will come to me very easily, if a legitimate problem did in fact exist. 

The second benefit is flexibility. Due to this flexible nature of homeschooling in general, we were able to pivot and spend several months in Mexico City, while M worked in person with his team there. But it's not just geographic flexibility, it's also the idea that we can elevate some subjects when it makes sense (focusing on art made a ton of sense there since the scene is so vibrant and ever changing), and deprioritize things that are easy to come back to (like math). 

Our state requires that certain subjects be studied and provides guidelines for how many hours. We are filling out a transcript where Laurel puts together components of her self-directed learning that fit into these categories. One credit of Environmental Studies included an author study of Rachel Carson, notebooking prompts with a Harbor & Sprout guide on mycology and leading a class on foraging for peers at our co-op. Amazing, if you ask me! 

At some point, her evaluator and I can sign off on this and give her a home school diploma. However, as I am not an accredited institution, a high school diploma actually means very little on its own. So the more important thing is to discern short and long term goals, and design a course of study that walks you towards those things. And of course, to collect artifacts of growth and accomplishment, which will open doors along the way. 

DITL January Homeschool

Here's what Julie Bogart of Brave Writer calls a narrative sketch. The purpose is to jot down your activities one day a month or week in order to "catch" what actually happened, as opposed to what you planned. 

This month is weird because two of our five family members are not here! Laurel and M are in Mexico going to Spanish school and working in person, respectively. They are definitely still involved in the homeschool routine, though. For instance, Laurel and I met with my aunts and sisters on zoom this week for our monthly book club (the Narrative of Frederick Douglass) and M is crafting Python lessons for the kids and meeting them virtually when they need help. 

This week was weird because a massive snowstorm dumped a foot of snow on our city and 37 of 90 plows broke down during the storm, leaving a a big mess behind. We made a massive pile of snow when we cleared our driveway and all the little kids on the street came over and helped Max dig a huge tunnel through it, that will probably be there for quite a while. It turned bitterly cold so our regular activities have been canceled and we spent a lot of time indoors. 

Today we finally made it out of the neighborhood and went to my parents house to visit. They had my 4 year old nephew there and there was a lot of wrestling, pillow fights and fort building that went on. We had coffee and breakfast together and then the boys and I returned home. I went on a Zoom for "office hours" for a Brave Writer training I'm doing and we talked about reluctant writers and how to stay focused on writer's voice when the mechanics and handwriting are lagging (and cooperation). Marko started his virtual English Language Arts class with my friend, who is a secondary English teacher. Max worked on a little homophone book he is making. 

We all did some Duolingo to practice our Spanish. The boys both worked on a page of math from their Richard Fisher math workbooks. Max practiced some cursive. Marko wrote in his journal for photo class (he and M are taking a photo class on Discord that has lessons and assignments on taking better photos). Marko also worked on typing some descriptions in his slide deck of things he has done this year. We added some more notes to our February brainstorming/dumping of things we have going on next month. 

They are playing video games with their friends now. Later Marko will help Max with koans, and Max will meet virtually with M about it in the morning. Marko requested leeks in our grocery order and they finally arrived today so maybe he will make potato leek soup? We have a lot of chicken pot pie left so we may put that off until tomorrow.