Balance

Thought this space perfect for airing misgivings about the 5 year/$20,000 (?) committment I just made to IUPUI by starting the MLS program. I lament the loss of my free time*, which I could be spending learning about childhood development while the girls are still children, cooking and exploring food locally, reading!!, catching up with friends (new and old), gardening!!, keeping up on basic chores and household management (also trying to buy a house), sewing, making things for the girls to keep and use and love and pass on to whomever they please, sustainable living plans, 2.0 learning, etc. Nothing new here. You all know what I am talking about. Balance. Life. Just frustrated that I am now committed to giving up so much of what I have so little of (money and time) in order to be able to have more of the one ($) - though obviously education has more value in and of itself. Still thinking that at 30 (yes!), the things I want to learn may not be available in a class room- and certainly don't require loans (long term and low interest though they may be).

All that said (and guessing some of you are nodding along- and still others shaking angry fists at the screen- funny I thought only 2 people looked at this), I love my classes! Tee hee. Funny how that works out. Still working out the free time bit and personal growth.

*free time for me is precisely: Thurs eve 5-8, every other Fri 5-bedtime, every other Sat 6-bedtime, and every other Sun til 5ish. Weird segments without my children that I didn't have before the divorce and would rather not have if you know what I mean, but that I have been making the most of. Just hoping that having this time set aside means that homework and school stresses won't encroach on the precious few hours I do have with Zelle and Lena. Even if I will have to focus rather strongly to eek out time for Yoga, sewing, learning to knit, relearning Spanish, giving plasma, vacuuming, fixing the vaccuum, folding the laundry, fixing hems and holes- you know this balance thing is tricky!
But a lucky problem to have so many choices~

of interest

(found this through Sojourners and it resonates)

Thursday, January 03, 2008

Archbishop of Canterbury on a 'Green' New Year (by Rose Marie Berger)

The Archbishop of Canterbury posted his New Year's message on YouTube - inviting everyone making a resolution in 2008 to keep asking, "What world do we want to pass on to the next generation?" Filmed between a recycling center and the Canterbury Cathedral, Archbishop Rowan Williams said:

In a society where we think of so many things as disposable, where we expect to be constantly discarding last year's gadget and replacing it with this year's model - do we end up tempted to think of people and relationships as disposable? ... If we live in a context where we construct everything from computers to buildings to relationships on the assumption that they'll need to be replaced before long, what have we lost? ... God is involved in building to last … God doesn't give up on the material of human lives ... and God asks us to approach one another and our physical world with the same commitment ... God doesn't do 'waste' ... .

Rose Marie Berger is an associate editor for Sojourners.