College of One

Ah! Time has flown, as it is wont to do, and it’s now the third week of school! I felt blue the first week, angsty the second week, and calm this third week. I’m living a life of leisure but still feeling worn out at the end of each day. I vacillate between worrying that I’ve become lazy and feeling like I’m doing too much.

I spend a couple hours each day working on my stories now, and while it feels like I’m not getting anywhere, this week I’m able to look at the writing objectively instead of through a lens of self-flagellation. That’s something brand new for me! In fact, there are a lot of new things I’m doing lately.

I’m teaching myself Italian.
I booked a vacation to Arches, Zion, and Bryce Canyon (usually I just come up with the big idea and let Kevin do all the booking).
I got suckered into being the producer on Rocco’s plays after 7 years of hiding whenever the outgoing producer looked my way.
I’m volunteering at Hopelink with my neighbor—usually stocking the food market, but sometimes going out to farms to do gleaning and pretending that it’s my farm and my barn and my one-lane road lined with giant poplars.
I’m making artistic arrangements with the sarcastic amount of cucumbers our two vines put out.
I made the switch to digital scrapbooking.
I’m scouting out kittens at our local cat shelter!!

And of course there are all the old things, like reading, gardening, subbing, cooking, baking, carpooling, and all the other activities that get lumped into the term “homemaking” and given a bad rap even though they are the very best things in life.

It feels like I’m in a class with a really vague description at a liberal arts colleges that “goes beyond majors and minors,” where all the cafes are vegan and you make up your own grades. That’s fine with me—I’ve always loved being a student. This quarter, I’m going to grade myself in kittens because grading myself by cucumbers would be too easy.

(These are all from different harvests.)