Monday 10 January 2011

Days like these

Anyone who knows me in real life, or indeed has followed this blog for more than a short while will already know I am an optimist. I tend to always see the light at the end, rather than the gloom of a tunnel, the glass not only half full but another bottle or a tap handily placed to refill it again, every mistake or bad move as an 'improvement opportunity' or lesson to be learnt.

I know this tendancy can be annoying to others, I'm not 100% convinced it is healthy myself, it can certainly be on the short sighted side, but I've got this far in life with an airy wave of my hand and an 'it'll turn out okay...' and thus far it seems to have done.

Today could be framed as a bad day really. My car, which has cost a bloody fortune to keep roadworthy and costs me about £15 a week just to have sat outside on the road in terms of insurance and road tax, isn't running. It doesn't like the damp and simply refuses to start. This is both annoying just because I don't want to be shelling out money I could put to better use for something that's not working anyway and it is inconvenient because if it was running we would have gone to a friend's today. If it continues to not start I will have various things due to happen this week that I'll have to cancel.

The tenant viewing didn't happen either. 15 minutes after they were supposed to be here, after I'd spent the morning cleaning mirrors, fretting about creating that important first impression and refusing to let Dragon & Star get anything out to play with the agent knocked on the door to say it didn't look like they were coming.  He came and had a look round the house anyway as he'd not been before. I don't know why the potential tenant didn't turn up, I guess it's irrelevant really.

So days like these, days when everything feels rather out of my control and like it's all stacked up against us are the ones when we have to really question what we're doing. I think it is far harder to be responsible for the source of your stress yourself, when actually it is entirely within your reach to stop what's going on and just decide not to do it after all.

As a Home Educator this is something I am already familiar with. We don't often have bad hours let alone bad days, but they do come along every so often. Days when life would be so much simpler if Dragon and Star went to school, I went to work and we were just like everyone else. Those are the opportunities for us to challenge what we're doing, question our lifestyle and re-evaluate whether it is still working for us. Thus far we have always concluded that yes, this is the right path for us and whilst the bad days would be for different reasons we'd still have times of stress and discord and wondering what it's all about even if we did what everyone else does.

I don't think there is much in life which isn't worth sweating over a bit, gritting your teeth at times and getting through the tough bits to the stuff that makes it all worth it. At the moment I would liken our countdown to the first bit of a rollercoaster ride. We're still in the queue at the moment, it's been a long, long queue. To begin with we were just fed up to be at the wrong end of such a long wait - that was us back last summer, knowing what we wanted but with very little to do other than hanging around waiting and shuffling forward a little every so often. Now we're near the front it's starting to feel pretty scary. I can sense how scared we'll be a few weeks down the line when we are strapped in and at the point of no return - that tough, uphill bit where every second feels like hours as you climb ever upwards. I can look further ahead to that hands in the air, wind in our hair, screaming for more, rush of adrenaline and crazy excitement as we realise how much we LOVE IT. Or we'll hate it, realise it was a big mistake and come off shaking and happy it's over. At the very least we'll never look at rollercoasters again and wonder what we're missing, whether it is something we should have tried.

So today I am appreciating the kids being able to choose a dvd to watch, a comfy sofa to sit on, I'll appreciate a hot bubble bath later, a glass of wine with my dinner and a warm snuggly bed to sleep in tonight. These are things we won't have in a few weeks time. I'm contenting myself that nothing really worth doing every comes easily and that these challenges and uncertainty and testing times will be what makes it all really rewarding when it all comes together.Which I am confident it will.... just hope it's soon!

2 comments:

  1. Wow, another family doing the same this year :) I wonder if we will meet on the road? I can't imagine too many WWOOF hosts having two families at the same time, but sounds like it'd be very interesting to compare notes....I haven't looked at the low impact forum recently, so will have to drop in again.
    Your ups and downs, packing and sorting, sounds very much like we're up to. So glad you found my blog, I'll be watching yours with interest!

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