Why We Don’t Start
Hello and Happy New Year Home Schoolers!
Below are a few thoughts I’ve had as I’ve started the new year.
A few weeks ago I got a prompt by Facebook to wish a friend a Happy Birthday. I thought to myself, sure, yes. It had been a while since we had corresponded. Actually, quite a while. This friend had been instrumental in my decision to go forward with a stem cell transplant. She had gone through one herself. She prepared and encouraged me for the grueling but life-saving experience. “It won’t be cake walk,” I remember her saying, “but you can do it!”
And so, I did. That was in 2019.
In my birthday greeting, I told her how much I appreciated her support- how significant her advice and encouragement were to my final decision. How my life has been extended as a result and how well I was doing.
I got a response the next day, but not from her. It came from another member of the group we were all part of, an AL Amyloidosis Facebook Group. This member told me she was gone. She had died. We were all told our transplants were not a cure. That the remissions we would likely enter into needed to be considered temporary. The news of her passing was hard for me to take. Especially since I had put off reaching out to her when I could have. I had let more than one opportunity slide.
Why do we procrastinate? Why do we put off starting or doing something, getting after it now as some would say? I think one reason is that we believe we will have tomorrow. That we can get to “it” later. Likely we can get to “it” later, but not always.
Memento Mori.
So here we are at the beginning of the new year. Some of you have made New Year’s resolutions, and I hope you are able to see your commitments through to their completion. I want to encourage you to consider the relationships you have in your life, to take and make time for them, to appreciate what you receive and what you add to another’s life. Take the time to teach your children to distinguish between real relationships and fake ones, the ones driven by algorithms that come to and for us through the on-line world. Our children need to know the difference, how to recognize them, how to push back against the increasing mechanization of the world we live in.
It begins with us.
More on this in my next post.
Thanks for reading!
Curt Bumcrot, MRE
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The first announcement: Our early bird testing discount is in full swing. Save $2.00 to $5.00 per student if you register in January to test remotely later this spring or summer. Click here to be taken to our testing page where you can register at last year’s prices.
The second announcement: As a way of saying thank you for using Basic Skills as your achievement test provider, we are making available, at no cost, Marcy Cook tiling task card packets. Click here to learn more.
