Love this! At what age did you realise the second part? How do you reconcile this? Do you need to? Do you just live with both truths side by side?
I’ve been aware of and skirting around the unschooling world for just 8 years now and what you’ve written succinctly sums up some of my views of it.
It sounds refreshingly free but often ends up looking like rampant, selfish individualism which ignores the many privileges which allow such a drop out/cherry picked lifestyle to be a choice.
I don’t see anything wrong with what you are personally doing by the way - you are doing awesome work to be open and share your life in exactly this way and don’t owe anything to anyone (presuming from what you’ve shared you’ve not knowingly left a trail of abandoned children all over the world!)
On a personal level, do you worry about illness, old age? Your resourcefulness must be in your favour. Anyone working pay check to pay check without wealth build up is in a similar position with old age, but your life looks way more fun!
I used to get meaning from life by nursing - helping people through what was often very difficult situations with their/family health. Now I’m ‘just’ a parent and help with voluntary things for their music and sporting interests (which benefits far more than just them). But it all feels incredibly meaningless and like a trap if I’m honest.
If my family was wiped out, I would probably try to radically downsize and simplify my life (I would be very wealthy from cashing up everything we own) and just dedicate my life to finding ways to help raise awareness and do practical things to help the environment and vulnerable people in general. It feels like that is all that matters right now. But it also feels like this is incompatible with the family life I have constructed so far which is awfully mainstream aside from homeschooling. My kids would hate to give up their current lifestyle. Our lifestyle is funded by an engineering job that is mainly road construction - something I don’t even want as we need less roads and more mass transport systems!
Thanks as always for the thought provoking writing. Meri kirihimete/Happy holidays. (It’s Christmas Eve in Aotearoa as I write).
Do you still feel that sense of freedom? Has it changed at all since this realization at 29?
Absolutely still feel it.
Love this! At what age did you realise the second part? How do you reconcile this? Do you need to? Do you just live with both truths side by side?
I’ve been aware of and skirting around the unschooling world for just 8 years now and what you’ve written succinctly sums up some of my views of it.
It sounds refreshingly free but often ends up looking like rampant, selfish individualism which ignores the many privileges which allow such a drop out/cherry picked lifestyle to be a choice.
I don’t see anything wrong with what you are personally doing by the way - you are doing awesome work to be open and share your life in exactly this way and don’t owe anything to anyone (presuming from what you’ve shared you’ve not knowingly left a trail of abandoned children all over the world!)
On a personal level, do you worry about illness, old age? Your resourcefulness must be in your favour. Anyone working pay check to pay check without wealth build up is in a similar position with old age, but your life looks way more fun!
I used to get meaning from life by nursing - helping people through what was often very difficult situations with their/family health. Now I’m ‘just’ a parent and help with voluntary things for their music and sporting interests (which benefits far more than just them). But it all feels incredibly meaningless and like a trap if I’m honest.
If my family was wiped out, I would probably try to radically downsize and simplify my life (I would be very wealthy from cashing up everything we own) and just dedicate my life to finding ways to help raise awareness and do practical things to help the environment and vulnerable people in general. It feels like that is all that matters right now. But it also feels like this is incompatible with the family life I have constructed so far which is awfully mainstream aside from homeschooling. My kids would hate to give up their current lifestyle. Our lifestyle is funded by an engineering job that is mainly road construction - something I don’t even want as we need less roads and more mass transport systems!
Thanks as always for the thought provoking writing. Meri kirihimete/Happy holidays. (It’s Christmas Eve in Aotearoa as I write).