“If you hear a voice within you say ‘you cannot paint,’ then by all means paint 

and that voice will be silenced.”

– Vincent Van Gogh

“Likewise with randomness, uncertainty, chaos; you want to use them, not hide from them.

You want to be the fire and wish for the wind.  

– Nassim Taleb, Antifragile

Social Health: Restarted martial arts, classes this year = 2. Adventure Scouts meetings zoo = 2 ocean = 1.

Mental Health: Starting the clean-up and organizing the office/school stuff has been uplifting so far…

Physical Health: Losing 7 kilo, 2 lost so far, getting in better shape in general. Saturday did Cardio, Sunday Total Body Circuit and swimming, Monday Alphabet Exercise and Speed 1.0 Thursday Cardio again, then skipped Wednesday and ended up on the original schedule, which is easier to remember.

Saturday: I vented a lot, I know I could delete the complaints, but they were all a bit necessary to me finding out why I was so angry… I did some garden work restoring a little access to the backyard… via the paths. The new sickle works well for ginger. I took orange peel off the lawn it made me really angry it was there… it must have been a family member just dumping trash in our main view, it bothers me that I would have to ask anyone to throw trash in a trash can, it bothers me a lot.

IDENTIFIED STRESS POINTS Venting is important for me personally, because stress had been sapping my energy and I needed to parse my points of stress to see which I could do anything about, which were unimportant vs which were major points to address, in the end, my main point of stress 1. I don’t where I’ll be living in the next 1-3-5 years. 2. tension in the family over hoarding. 3. disciplining the kids. 4. clean up after a big storm. 5. my own clutter in the home/trouble organizing.

EMOTIONAL EXPANSION – I felt better after venting by writing and just “expansion” of just feeling okay feeling angry.

DETERMINATION – I made up my mind to do the best I could to live where I am despite that we may be moving later, that is particularly hard for me because we moved around every two years when I was a little kid, so you may make friends, but then you have to leave them, in the end, that’s what turned me from an extrovert to an introvert, friends weren’t worth the pain of getting to know and then losing so soon. Part of the reason we moved was my mom didn’t clean, so a new place is nicer than one which hasn’t been cleaned in two years, my dad didn’t clean either, so cleaning was tricky to learn for me, but I was never tempted not to clean, I’m not the best at it, but I don’t like things crazy messy at all.

ORGANIZATION – Organizing my own stuff has been interesting, I’m combining two households of school/art materials, me of California and me of Hawaii, yesterday my daughter went through her drawings and drawing notebooks to pick which ones she wanted in her portfolio, I didn’t question her about which to keep, the ones she kept we put in a plastic sheet binder because otherwise, paper drawings will mold here very soon. I would rather work room by room, but my bedroom is a mix of kids’ toys, craft items, and school stuff and so is the office, so it’s better to group what I can.

CLOTHES – It’s kind of Kon Mari style right now, but I don’t think I have excess clothes because I am always looking to discard excess clothes whenever new ones come in or when I notice the old ones are “quite” old.

BOOKS – So, I guess it should be books time then, I have a bit too much in the bedroom bookshelf, I could separate a milk crate of books out from that.

PAPERS – As I was sorting the papers I found a ton of draft schedules that I had tried… It was kind of sad that I am always struggling to make a schedule, but at least it is also written evidence that I’m always trying to live my best life and do the best I can for my kids… Many I finally threw away, it felt good throwing away planners I didn’t need, some had cool activities we did in school, or habit formation notes, like how many times we went swimming, but none of it was really needed, all the school activities are in my brain as well.

One schedule stood out:

8 Exercise/Shower 8:30 Breakfast/Language 9 Bus/Song Time/Writing

9:30 School Roll/Calendar/Writing/Planner/Letter of the Day/Feelings Pond

10 Lecture 10:30 Music Time 11 Story Time 11:30 Block Time 12 Lunch 1 Outside 2 Values 3 Stoic Quote

4 Dinner/Science Economics 5 Lego

I think I will try to bring that schedule back kind of, but I am able to get up at 6ish lately…

So 6 Writing Time 7 Exercise/Shower 8:30 Breakfast/Language 9 Song Time/Bus Time

9:30 I Am the Pond Meditation, EQ Calendar, School Roll, Letter of the Day Writing/Drawing Practice

10 Lecture 10:30 Music Time 11 Story Time Younger 11:30 Block Time for Younger (Lecture 2 Older)

12 Lunch 1 Outside Time 2 Stoic Quote and Values Story Time Older (Play Younger)

3 School Younger (Free Time Older) 4 Dinner with Crash Course Chemistry 5 Lego+

So when I started organizing school I ran into videos about organizing the time/curriculum of school, specifically Charlotte Mason type schools, that is not what I was looking for, I wanted to organize the “stuff”, but going through my papers I found the old schedule that somehow called to me to adapt it… it really felt special, throwing away 40+ old schedules, this one really called to me emotionally, so much so that I bought a bus to do bus time again. It was $34… I’ve really been spending a lot lately, I notice that, but I’m not yet worried about it. I kind of miss working and making my own money, but for now, things are okay the way they are, really no one wants to babysit my kids while I work yet, maybe when they are older. I’m actually very excited to go with this schedule it had been working really well in California before I moved to Hawaii, the kids were 1 and 4, now they are 2 and 6, before I used all my own curriculum now we use Acellus plus my lessons, a lot has changed for the better. While my personal mental health suffered and the world suffered my school improved and my kids’ life stayed decent, I think that’s what I was sacrificing for and in the end, I’m not sorry, but I have to put a bit into my own tank too, or it won’t work long term… the pandemic showed me who cares about me (my husband and sister) and who I care about (my kids), but it showed me the limits of my husband’s patience, my father and sister’s mental health and the limits of my ability to respect my father and meet him halfway, I can’t really do that, I hit a breaking point with him where I won’t put on a facade that he wants the whole family to share, he is welcome in my life, but I won’t accept his restrictions on my life or his criticisms or even his judgment, he may “have it”, but I don’t have to “accept it”. Once I thought I could never fit in my dad’s shoes, now I find he isn’t half the man I am, even though I’m a woman. It’s because I don’t hide from problems in TV or anything and he does, it’s because I don’t leave dishes for other people to clean and throw my trash everywhere and he does, it’s not that he isn’t a good person in any way, it’s because he takes the easy way out more than the hard way and I take the hard way more than the easy way. That’s the truth about why I have lost respect for him and gained it for myself.

Sunday: Visited hot springs with friends, it was really fun and relaxing. The first day that felt right in a long time.

Monday: Tried the old school schedule, did exercise, music, outside time, storytime, and music time didn’t go well, but exercise and outside time did. Tired from swimming yesterday, but so glad that we formed an “Adventure Scout Unit” for our girls. It may be stupid that I want to teach martial arts, but that’s what makes me feel like life makes sense. And I think taking the kids to play with their friends is that for them.

Tuesday: Second day on the old schedule, the kids enjoy it, we get less done with the class progress, but that is probably fine. The kids have both learned so much I want to integrate what they know more than I want to just teach a lot. In chemistry we covered significant figures, we covered error:

[(Measured-Actual)/Actual]x100%

Yes, it was hard and above grade level, but I like it because I want to show that we need the math before we get to it in math so it makes sense to be learning it at all. This is exactly the kind of math/science integration I wanted to get and I’m happy to be doing it even if it means going slow and looking for examples. We covered accuracy vs precision as well and average and range calculations, so it was a dense day for my daughter. We learned about Wilma Rudolf who went from not walking due to polio to three Olympic gold running metals, that was really inspirational. Health and chemistry classes have been really useful to talk about those topics. My son finished kindergarten math, he is not yet three, but almost three, he is reading really well and I think if he talked clearer people would notice how smart he is, but he doesn’t write or speak too clearly (about normal) so if it wasn’t for me seeing him do his school work I wouldn’t have known how good his is at math and reading either. My daughter is quite smart, but my son is very surprisingly ahead, probably due to my daughter teaching him…

Wednesday: Went to the zoo, had a great day, taught karate, but coming back home the dog was really sick or seemed that way… had to clean up a lot of foul blood and urine and vomit off the floor, beds, and sofa… so.

Thursday: The dog being sick distracted the kids during school, still got some math/agriculture classes done, but having a sick dog wet blankets the day a bit, though the kids still wanted to sing. My daughter lied to me about her 1 hour game timer going off to try to get more time and I gave her harsh discipline, lying is one thing I can’t abide in people who expect me to do my best with them and be honest with them. I was sad to discipline her, but the sooner she learns not to lie to me the better it will be for her, her first grade report card says “respects the rights of others” when you lie you rob others to their right to the truth… I know I’m very stubborn about lying, but I think it’s an upward trend towards honesty or a downward spiral to flakiness. I think when you lie to others too much you do something worse, I think you start lying to yourself, then you do it so much it’s automatic, ANTS automatic negative thoughts have been shown to hurt your brain, therefore honesty is actually a health concern. Exercised at night, but it was awkward, felt my left quad tear a bit so I stopped massaged it and restarted. I need to stretch more. Been frustrated trying to get the house clean for about a year already… when I came back last November it was full of mold, clutter, spiders, mice and broken glass as if no one lived here, but my dad and sister were living there that way… after my grandfather died the funeral being delayed seemed to make the family really gloomy, but I was surprised they knew I was coming and didn’t at least pick up the broken glass since I was coming with a baby and child. But they didn’t. My family has issues. So it’s that extra element of frustration that I am the only adult fighting the clutter, my sister goes to her room to avoid it and my father alternates between causing messes, ignoring messes, and complaining about other people’s clutter without cleaning his. I’m so angry about it, I think I can actually clean it up though, I think once systems are in place to do most normal stuff, like take in groceries, return other people’s items and throw away trash, then even though my family is messy I think they will be able to keep going on a system… it frustrates me and it confuses me that they don’t already have a system, but it’s the as is situation so therefore got to deal with it.

Friday: Our dog is really ill, started medicine today at least. Magots are hatching in the kitchen also… so extra cleaning and laundry put me behind on my workout, but maybe going to do it at night… School is going well, covered reproduction in avian and mammals today, both genders, also covered the romantic period of theatre, Goethe, and “or” “and” computer coding. School is really going very well, added music, added music lessons, added EQ/labeling emotions, added outside time, just very well over all. Kind of off schedule though due to the extra dog issues.

So trying to do my best despite the dog being really ill… not that I don’t like the dog, but not everybody gets to fall apart all together.

🧉