A Little Yin and A Little Yang

I'm finding the return to academic life a bit difficult. I guess the reason is that I mistakenly thought that it would be a return to college life. Only with grown-up accessories... I know, I can hear the laughter.

The start of classes felt a bit like what I imagine ski-diving to be. A little anxious at all that wide open space and then the glorious plunge right into it. Imagine my surprise to find that instead of a parachute, I had a rather secure bungee cord attached. Quite the shocker. The first rebound was definitely a large smack on the underside of the small prop plane, which quite clearly jostled all remaining passengers, as well as leaving me a bit disgruntled.

So here I am, taking two classes and realizing that if I study as much as I want to (and let me pause here to remark on the difference that the internet makes. In college, if I ran across a term or concept that I didn't fully understand, I did not fret. I simply wrote it down in my notes. If it was important then the professor would certainly comment on it during the lecture. However, GOOGLE has altered my strategy. If I come across something unfamiliar, it takes two seconds to find a plethora of information. How interesting! Before I know it I have wondered down a rabbit trail that may or may not be pertinent to my studies but which I find fascinating. Hours can pass before I realize just what has happened and how far I have been side-tracked. Don't even get me started on Wikipedia. Which I am beginning to realize is a bit more like a gossip column than a reliable source of information. Urgh.) Anyhow, while this "learning is happening" I fall further behind in my actual class requirements and the laundry can pile up in alarmingly tall and wide heaps, and the house (which is always twittering on the very edge of a disaster zone) can sprout a life of its own, and the children begin to melt-down in a "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy" chant that is appallingly loud and pitiful. It really does take the slightest nudge to push us over the collective line into total chaos. Sigh.


But, I am nothing if not a planner and fairly soon I came up with a college-ish sort of idea. Monday, Wednesday, Friday I would devote to my hereto for normal SAHM routines....cleaning, shopping, mending, laundry, bills, appointments, exercise, etc. All of those tasks, both large and small that keep our life running smoothly. On Tuesday and Thursday I could dive right into school and spend hours reading, listening, arguing and thinking.

I'm sure other folks would do it differently. But I tried that other way. And for me, my multi-tasking abilities kept leading me astray. Okay, actually this single-minded devotion had to be suggested to me by a close friend since I am still clinging to my multi-tasking superiority like a dog with a bone or a sleep deprived two year-old. And the harsh truth is that I'm just not disciplined enough to do both in one day.

Other than my Google forays, I find that if I listen to the inner voice that tells me it is okay to stop studying for a minute to throw in a quick load of laundry, I get easily distracted by the growing playmobil chaos in the reading room which surely needs to be picked up before the kids come home, which leads to vacuuming the rug and under the sofa, and somehow dusting and then sweeping the stairs and then a quick swipe at the toilet and shower... I have come to the realization that my inner voice is related to that children's book, If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. Before long the kids are home and I have read only 2 pages of assigned reading. It is all so easy to justify that I could end up with no time to actually think unless I am brutal with myself.

So it is that I find myself on one day sitting at a desk with a hot cup of coffee, notebook full of lofty thoughts as I ponder the concept of sola scriptura and its implications for the community life of the church and the next day on my knees scrapping snot off the wall with a Clorox wipe. A little yin and little yang.