Today as I walked between my kitchen and living room I came upon the tipping point about our homeschool decision, which was: if I ever decide I want money more than I want our homeschool / family experience, I can always choose money. I am not destined to poverty for life (which is how I sometimes fear my future) just because - for now, and a while at least - I'm choosing not to work outside the home for financial compensation.

But can anyone know how strongly I feel I'm supposed to be hurrying my children along to free babysitting so I can go put my time and brain and body into someone else's endeavor, so they can give me money, and I can bring it home? Why do I feel this way? Simply because that's what nearly everyone I personally know is doing. Although this doesn't match with my or my husband's goals, I still feel this tremendous pressure to chase investment (in a home, in better cars, in more stuff, in nicer stuff), some outside sense of accomplishment, some way of being smart money-wise so I can have enough that I don't have to actually count up the bits and think about them.

What I need: mentors. I have been told, oddly it seems sometimes, I am a mentor or at least an inspiration to not a few who read here or know me. And I'm seeking the same in this category of my children's education and our life as a family. Applicants, do seek me out because I feel decisively like I'm setting on a path few travel and maybe one more importantly: a path my own family of origin did not travel.

I briefly feel such a kinship with and gratitude for my mother when I discuss this with her, later in the day on the phone. I'm saying, "... trying to accept that I won't be working" when she starts to talk and I add, "well I mean, working for pay." She interrupts herself to laugh "Yeah really!" aside, under her breath, in the exact we're-both-knowing-the-same-thing tone she'd use if I mentioned how perfectly sexy Johnny Depp is or said a perfect joke we both know and love. See, she and I know what "work" I really am looking forward to, work I started in on the moment my daughter was born but only get better at and enjoy more (with a few decidedly horrific "off" days, hee hee). My last six years and my future stretch out in a continuum of priorities and newness and love and learning and gratitude that just seems to bloom more and more and give me more energy than any previous endeavors.

It is funny sometimes finding out who I am, as I grow. I'm always a little surprised to find I'm not who people told me I was.

Labels: goodness, Grazdma, newness, school