On freedom and schedules

Creating this blog, and compiling all my history lessons into book lists that anyone could understand and use has only served to remind me that I’m really not as organized as I try to be.
I enjoy writing, and I hope this blog serves as a useful, if only virtual, escape from the confines of my home. But in getting it going, it has been easy for me to allow ‘me time’ to encroach on school time or bed time or time that could easily be used for something more “productive.”

I have written up all sorts of schedules detailing how accomplish everything around the house, school work, exercise etc and not stuck with one more than a day or so. The only set times we’ve managed to adopt in our daily routine are meal and snack times. Woe to the child who dares ask for food outside the appointed hour, lest the hand of Mama smack them down.

I keep thinking the perfect schedule is out there, if I can just write it up and post it somewhere in the house visible to all, one day we’ll just all start following it without a second thought. There will be no stomach bugs, or explosive diapers, or uncooperative children to throw a monkey wrench in the works. On really wild days, I try to tell myself that actually I love the “flexibility” of homeschooling; the “freedom” to adapt our schedule to suit our needs.  I’m not locked into a schedule that might “stifle our creativity.”

But by the end of the week, somehow despite an overwhelming amount of  freedom and creativity, no one has starved, we have clean clothes and our lessons (except for map work, somehow we always forget map work) are completed.

Perhaps this post is my way of saying, I hope to post a lot, on a regular basis, when in reality I’m going to post whenever I can sneak off with the laptop and write something before the battery dies or the baby has an explosive diaper. If I mange to create,  and stick to, a perfect schedule that includes uninterrupted Mama time, I’ll let you know.

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