Life Break Coach- Midlife Crisis Options 3 - 8

Trying to overcome my boredom with life, I first considered the easiest choices for radical lifestyle change- 1- SEX and 2- DRUGS- but swiftly ruled them out.  No pills or quick thrills for this lady!  Marrying a rock and roll musician was enough for me.

There has to be other options to help me through my fear of death (Isn't that what a midlife crisis is, after all?)...

Brainstorming other stereotypical ways people have reacted to the reality of their own mortality, this is what I came up with:

3.  Buy an expensive sports car.
4.  Dress too young for my age, i.e. wear a thong.
5.  Have plastic surgery.
6.  Get a tattoo or pierce something: bellybutton, nose, nipple, etc.
7.  Make your adolescent or tween child your friend.
8.  Have an extreme experience - skydiving, free falling, bungee jumping, etc.

Let's look at these one by one...

Option 3- Sports Car
Greg and I could buy a tricked-out, fifty to hundred thousand dollar sports car and cruise the roads together.  Not a bad idea.  I love riding through the mountains or over the water in the low country and I'm sure a really nice car that the kids haven't trashed would make the experience even better.  With the top down and the wind flowing through our hair, Greg and I could reconnect and relax as we see new places together.  Most sports cars are only two seaters, which enables plenty of alone time for our marriage.  We could plan romantic weekend getaways.   I am liking this idea more and more.  What could possibly be wrong with this solution?  After spending years trying to have children, we appreciate the miracle that each of our three babies is and feel the time with them is fleeting.  We had ten years as that childless couple; there will be plenty of time together after the kids head to college.  We want family time now so no sports car for us.

Option 4- Dress too young
No one wants to see me in a thong.  Next, option.

Option 5- Plastic Surgery
While I am guilty of staring in the mirror at every wrinkle and flaw on my face and body, I am proud of each laugh line and crease.  Also, I endured years of in vitro procedures and surgeries so I am through with needles and knives for this lifetime.  (If they come up with a surgically-free way of sucking fat off my thighs, I will reconsider this option.)

Option 6- Tattoos and Piercings
See Option 5.  (Full Disclosure- Greg got a tattoo when he turned thirty and would love to embellish it if given the chance.  I think he's nuts.)

Option 7- Kids as Friends
I have so many problems with this course of action.  While I adore my children and love spending time with them, I know that my kids need a mom not a friend.  They need guidance not a playmate.  Growing up, I had a friend whose mother dumped all her financial worries, career fears and romantic musings on her fourteen-year-old daughter.  Instead of her being a stable rock on which my friend could rely, her mother burdened her with grown up problems too young, greatly damaging their relationship.  I remember being shocked at how my friend argued with her mom, and then mortified when her mom wanted to go out with us when we turned sixteen.  I believe parents need their own friends to unwind with as do their children.  Parents and children's bonds grow stronger when each understands their defined role.

Option 8- Extreme Experiences
This option has me thinking.  How does one define extreme experience?  When I Googled it, I got skydiving, bungee jumping, and base jumping.  Do I really need to list the reasons why this is not a viable option for a mother of three?  However, I am totally up for an extreme experience in lifestyle changes.  (I think the only lasting lifestyle change from jumping out of a plane would be if the parachute didn't open.)

Now my question is: What extremes am I willing to go to find joy in my life?



  

Easter Island

Part of the draw of our sabbatical is the possibility of giving Anabel one more year of childhood, and consequently, slowing the speed of which her younger brother and sister's childhood passes, as well. Anyone with older brothers or sisters knows that when the oldest learned something about the adult world, they couldn't wait to spoil it for their beloved younger siblings.  Anabel has always been our imaginative child preferring to read, write or play pretend in her free time.  Unlike most of her friends at home, she still believes in fairies, Santa and even, the Easter bunny with all her heart.  I want to keep it that way.  No, I don't want her laughed at or ridiculed by her peers, but I don't want to see her innocent world of believing - of having faith in the unseen- to end.

Aren't we all asked to believe things we can't see?  I wasn't there when men walked on the moon, but I believe it happened.  I can't see the love my mother has for me when she berates me again for spending a year away from home, but I know it's there.  I didn't see Jesus heal the sick or turn water into wine, but I believe He did.  I can't see God while I'm praying, but I feel He's there.  How can we get through life without a little faith in the unseen? And oh, to have the faith of a child!  C. S. Lewis said, "Faith is the art of holding on to things your reason once accepted, despite your changing moods." Or your changing age, as the case may be.

Of course, it is easier to believe when you THINK you've seen.  Two years ago, Anabel caught the Easter Bunny in her room.  She woke to see a very tall shadow exiting her room and discovered a basket beside her bed.  She surmised that the shadow must have been the Easter Bunny, but instead of being thrilled by her discovery, she was terrified.  My goodness, he was big!  Now, I must sleep with her on the Saturday nights before Easter to guard against that massive bunny.

This year, Emma wasn't worried about Anabel's Harvey-sized rabbit; she fretted about having no Easter baskets as we had left our traditional baskets at home in Canton.  Unfazed, she immediately found a solution.  Laundry baskets.  They're bigger and hold more treats!  However, her fears were unwarranted as the Easter Bunny provided his own baskets this year.

As with Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas, we created new ways to celebrate Easter:

With a new friend from St. Helena Island, the kids hunted for eggs on appropriately named Hunting Island.

We shared our love of scavenger hunts with friends from Delaware.

The kids roamed the island in teams competing to find all items on the list to win a prize.  Some articles they took literally; some items they took figuratively.

For example, one item on the list was a photo of our neighbors, Steve and Mary.  Here's their beautiful portrait:

 Another item was a photo of a butterfly.  Now, I didn't think finding a live butterfly would be difficult thanks to our early spring, but here's what one team came up with:

I like kids that can see more than one solution to a problem!


Our Easter was unique this year in many ways, but the same in many others. While our children are not the little ones they used to be in their Easter dresses, suits and hats, we still celebrated our faith that the stone was rolled away and the Living Christ was not found with the dead, but among the believers.  While we shared the holiday with friends rather than family, we found communion just the same.

Trying New Things

"Don't fear failure so much that you refuse to try new things.  The saddest summary of a life contains three descriptions: could have, might have, and should have." - Louis E. Boone


Surprisingly, I just found this quote on a random Internet search.  I have never heard of Louis E. Boone, and yet, I have lived by his words for over a year.  Greg and I had talked for the past five years about taking a sabbatical to spend more time with the kids and try new things: personally and professionally.  Ironically, it was trying one new thing that started the ball rolling.

My book to be released June 2012

In a teacher's workshop less than two years ago, I presented technology-based curriculum that I had developed over six years teaching gifted children.  A few of my esteemed colleagues encouraged me to write my curriculum into a book and have it published.  Here's where trying something new came in... I actually did it.  For the first time in my professional career, I didn't just dream about it, talk about it, or think of all the reasons not to pursue it.  I wrote it up, sent it out to publisher land and didn't stop there.  After receiving a couple of rejection letters (which I proudly pinned to my bulletin board because receiving a rejection letter meant I had actually tried something, right?), I got a publishing offer from a small company in upstate New York.  But I didn't sign it.  I didn't want to sell myself out too soon.  When I hadn't heard anything from a couple of the more prominent publishers, I called them.  After a two hour conversation with the head of The Critical Thinking Company, he sent me a contract.  My passion for my topic convinced him that my curriculum worked.  Signing the contract, no one could have been more shocked.  I had tried a new thing and the world didn't open up and swallow me whole.  Instead of being eaten alive by the words: could have, might have, should have, I had accomplished something!

I'm a contributor!

Continuing my momentum, I have taken new writing classes and submitted articles to small magazines.  In the new April/May issue, I am a contributor to Beaufort's local publication, Fit and Family.  I have three short pieces or tidbits about family travel.  Small, but definitely a step in new direction.

What a thrill it is to see my name in print!  The question I keep asking myself is: Could I be a writer?  I'm having a book published.  Does that make me a writer?  I'm in a small magazine.  Does that make me a writer?  I have chronicled our year opening up about my thoughts, experiences and dreams. Does that make me a writer?


While I've been more tempted by professional pursuits, I have tried some new, personal things, too.  Remember my baking bread blog?  Baking bread is now my go-to, de-stress activity.  Nothing has made me feel more in touch with the spiritual than the simple act of producing this basic necessity of life.  I feel quite certain that I could live by bread alone... with butter and a nice Pinot... and share it with friends, of course.


Not all new things I've tried have been a success.  Some, I'm proud to say, failed miserably. Take pottery class, for example.  Since getting a plastic potter's wheel for Christmas when I was 10 years old, I have always wanted to take a real lesson.  With home school art in mind, I signed the whole family up at Coastal Art in Beaufort.  We met many interesting people who all helped our instructor, Pat, attempt to teach us the subtle art of clay pottery.


Here's what I fantasized I would create:

And here's what I actually made:

Yes, it is as uneven as it looks.  Feel free to laugh.

Stop staring at me, Pablo!  I'm trying!

Trying to keep my failure in perspective, I turned to words of advice from a great experimenter. Pablo Picasso said, "I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it."  Great words of advice, Pablo!  We're learning.  Unfortunately for me, I think his and my learning curves are a little out of sync.  Picasso's experiments created completely new art forms.  (Ever heard of Cubism?)  

Picasso's Cubist painting: Femme En Pleurs

My experiments created new... junk. So why am I proud?   It's my junk.


I'm also proud to say that the rest of the clan feels the same way about their junk, I mean art, and the other new things they've tried this year.  

Wyatt's candy/chip dish

Anabel's pencil cup and Emma's dog and Mickey Mouse

Wyatt's ?... we're not sure what it is...

We planned this family quest to discover new things and appreciate the joy in our lives.  Having planned our one year off the grid, we almost backed out at least twenty times due to fear.  Fear of going broke; fear of alienating the kids from their friends; fear of spending too much time together and thereby alienating our kids from us; fear of never getting a job again; fear of rejection; fear of judgment; FEAR OF FAILURE.  Ultimately, the fear that won out over every other was the fear of regret.  We knew we would regret not taking this sabbatical with our kids... the alternate fears were just conjecture.

Emma trying something new.

So trying new things proved to be a great success even when we failed.  With less than three months left of our big experiment, I have never felt less regretful or more excited about life.

SIG Happens

Wyatt and I have been SIG campers for a week now.  He is loving every minute of it and I am finally feeling like I can breathe.  While he enjoys the stimulation of a multitude of new classes and material he has never seen before, I am struggling to create lessons for classes I have never taught before.

Even though I am unsure of my curriculum, I love the SIG methodology for teachers!  It gives you so much freedom to meet the objectives of the teacher and the student without having to worry about a stupid state test.   Basically, I create objectives for the course and then the student creates a personal objective.  We meet and discuss how the activities created by the teacher and chosen by the student can meet all objectives.  How empowering for the student and the teacher!  This week has almost made me like teaching again... Almost.  But I still hate the hours.

The four classes I am teaching are Word Power, Gaming through the Centuries, SIG Apprentice, and Thinking Outside and Beyond the Box.

Word Power is basically expanding the student's vocabulary by researching and using Latin and Greek root word derivations.  I have introduced them to Sarah Kay and the power of spoken word poetry.  She was a hit!  If you haven't heard of her, check out her Ted Talk: Sarah Kay Ted Talk  We'll be using their root word derivations dictionaries to create many new products from their Word Power Menu over the next two weeks.

I have Wyatt in my class for Gaming through the Centuries.  This is a new class to SIG so I really got to come up with my own idea of what the class should be.  I started this week with ancient board games - learning how to play the game as well as why each culture created a particular game.  I think the anthropology lessons in this class are more interesting than just learning new games.  The first thing I noticed about the gifted kids in this class is that they may know a lot about playing games, but they do not know anything about gamesmanship.  So while teaching them Senet, Mancala, and Chess, I have had to work very hard to teach them that when playing a game someone is going to lose.  You win some, you lose some.  Deal with it!  Wyatt likes to win as much as anyone, but he has always handled losing well.  Since he was very small we started a rule in our home: the winner puts the game away.  Trust me, no winner gloats for very long while putting tiny pieces back correctly.  If you would like to learn about ancient board games, check out this link: Ancient Board Games  Next week, we look at ancient and modern sports.  I have planned a quidditch match for next Friday so say a prayer for me!

SIG Apprentice has been so much fun!  I get to be Donald Trump and give my 6 young business women competitions to see who gets to be the Apprentice and who hear's, "You're Fired!"  This week's competitions were "Pulling the Strings," "Eco-Friendly Photo Debate", and "Picture Frame Business Plan."  Pulling the strings is a cooperative learning lesson for team building where teams must work together pulling strings attached to a pen to play tic-tac-toe.  Very funny and revealing about personalities right off the bat.  The photo debate idea came to me as I was walking around the Emory campus and seeing signs everywhere about how "Green" Emory is.  I thought we should put it to the test.  I sent one team with their phone cameras to find all signs of eco-friendly practices on campus and the other team to find all signs of waste.  It was a close debate, but waste won, unfortunately.  These high school students really impressed me with our last competition of the week.  Teams created and mass produced a picture frame design and then created a business plan for their new company.  I feel very good about our future business leaders.  Their presentations were awesome!  If you'd like to see where we are:   Emory Campus Tour

My last class of the day is Thinking Outside and Beyond the Box.  I love teaching this class!  It has been so much fun sharing creative thinking strategies and new perspectives with these young gifted minds.  I even got to impress them with my own adventure into inventing when I showed them my Full Bathtub Website.  We will have our own invention convention before the end of camp.  I can't wait to see what creative ideas these kids come up with!  How creative are you?  Try the exercises I did in class: Creative Thinking Exercises

Hope I have wowed you with SIG!  Next, I'll let Wyatt tell of his impressions so stay tuned!