Time to Make Decisions

There's a big secret I like to pretend I keep from myself. I can't do everything. Sure, I've always been blessed with the ability to do anything I put my mind to, but I just can't do it all. I don't think any one of us was meant to.

Perfect and relevant examples: I can't stay up late watching movies and eating junk food and wake up at 4:30 am to go to the gym. I can't work a full-time job and homeschool and be a traditional homesteader, at least not in a way that allows me to enjoy any of those things, each of which I would enjoy on its own. Or I can, but not sustainably. I say it's a secret I pretend to keep from myself because despite being exhausted, irritable, and highly anxious, I continue to try to have my cake, and eat it too.

It's my Achilles' heel. It's hubris. And here's the thing, I believe, deeply, in an alternative.

When I pray, I mostly give thanks or say the Lord's prayer. It's the only way I can comfortably pray because I really feel silly and greedy asking for anything when I have so much and I know there are plenty of folks with so little. It's not that I think the Lord's prayer is magic and whenever I say it I get whatever I want. That's not it. But the Lord's prayer has the most calming four words I ever have known:

"...thy will be done." To me, it means all right, did what I could. I am no longer in control and I'm good with it. I'll let the powers that be take it from here. Similar to how I get myself calm for takeoff. I can't fly the plane and I already got in it, nothing to do but relax and trust the pilot.

Now I don't mean this to be a religious post, much less a philosophical one. I'm just sharing my experience and how I've gotten to a place where I've decided: it's time to make some decisions about what I'm keeping and what I'm letting go of.

Here's my process of elimination on two really big questions.

Lawyer or farmer? I'm going with lawyer. For whatever reason, I wasn't put in a place where I had to choose to leave a career to get my family some land and some togetherness. I was instead offered a remote job, and have continued to be presented with remote legal opportunities. I'm good at my job. As I recently learned from my sister, it may be my "special talent creativity," something I'm good at but begrudgingly so. As opposed to farming, which possibly could be my "self-actualized creativity," if I wasn't the type of person that enjoys doing things I'm good at (more time for reflection on this later). The point is, I'm going to be a lawyer and I'm going to get creative in realizing my desire to be a homesteader. It just won't look like a lot of the #homesteaders on social media. It'll be my own. More on that later as well.

Homeschool or "free time"? I'm going with homeschooling. I don't have a well-thought-out rationale here. This is all gut. This world seems nuts to me. I was "offline" forever and now that I've been back for about a year I see how easy it is to waste all my "free time" caught up in the swiping and the scrolling and the living vicariously through others. And when am I most likely to do that? When I finally get time away from the kids. So would I really get much more done if they went to school six hours a day? More likely than not I'd spend the "extra" time driving them to and from there, missing them and, oh yeah, scrolling, swiping, and living vicariously through others. So why bother? For as long as I can continue to live in this nutty world, I want my children with me. If that means I work a little in the mornings, the evenings, and on Saturdays so I can take big chunky breaks randomly throughout the day to be with my kids, then so be it. It's worth it to me. They need it. I need it. And this is what we'll do while we have the privilege of doing it.

Do you have any big decisions to make? Any you'd rather not have to make?