it's alive!...

...barely.

I have dived (oh, please let that be correct...I have doven, um, no) into water so deep and murky that I cannot see the surface. Okay, I'm being entirely too over-dramatic here. I could probably very easily keep my head above water, if only I stopped a moment to stand up and take a breath. However, I feel that I've been on a kind of drone-autopilot setting for the last couple of months. I am not happy with the situation and I'm thinking about ways to make some changes. Suggestions for someone who is entirely over-educated and under-experienced for just about anything are welcome. And, when I call for suggestions, I am looking for ways I can provide a tiny bit financially for our tiny family. I am used to making tiny, pretty-much-inconsequential amounts of money, but I do need to be able to make enough to pay for my vast amounts of highly-relevant-to-all-aspects-of-my-life education. (I kind of kid. I enjoyed my time in higher education. I just wonder, sometimes, if I should have done a lot very differently. Then, I remind myself that isn't even a choice, so I should focus on right now. Yes.)

I plan to be in a much different position next year and for many of the following years. I want to be able to embrace the ideas we've decided are best for our family, instead of freaking out and deciding to take on entirely too much of what I don't want because that is what's familiar to me. Ugh.

On the life learning front, by the end of this month, I will have much to share. October has been, and will continue to be, full of homeschool-group activities. Thanks be for our homeschooling group. We would not have traveled in this direction had we not found and been embraced by the group.

For the next many months, though, I'll be back to my old standby of counting down the days until I'm finished with my current obligations. In high school, my teachers would consult with me about how many days we had remaining of the year. I didn't mind the countdowns then. Now, though, I realize I'm not living life the way I want to be, I'm almost constantly focused on either tiny bits of the present or on our big dreams for the future. I'd like to be back in a place where I'm focusing on the big picture that represents right freaking now.

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I would add some music to this post, as I've had a bit of a soundtrack going through my head as I've whined and fretted, but I'm using not-my-computer and I can't get the audio to work, so I can't hear the songs first to confirm they're the ones I want. I'll include the songs later...maybe.