Evolution & Change

When I started this blog, I was temporarily homeschooling the J-Rex and trying my hand at urban farming, suburban condo-style. The vast majority of my initial posts were about my first excellent year in the garden and the incredible (and a few not-so-incredible) experiences the J-Rex and I were having in our homeschool journey.  I was enjoying writing again, enjoying the us of the blog medium to communicate with the world at large, and enjoying the process of self-discovery I was going through in my garden and homeschool.

Things change, though.  Life takes us in directions we don't expect. This is not a bad thing. It is simply change. Evolution. 

In my case, the two things that inspired the start of this blog have ceased to be the center of my world: 

My garden - a venture I had begun in a home with a large front yard in full sun and brought with me to a yard-less condo in the shade - has been a constant struggle and, honestly, a money and time-sink.  Where I once loved wandering through my plants, pruning and watering to my heart's content, I now dread because of a terrible combination of an uncontrolled mosquito population in my complex and stunted plant growth from lack of sun. The death of my garden hurt me more than I've cared to admit to anybody until this moment - I had been proud of my ability to provide food for our table via seeds and my own dirty hands, proud to nurture a growth I took as symbolic of our progress as a family. When the garden began to fail, I began to worry that we, too, were on our way to rock-bottom (a place one tends to think they are at until they fall further).  I was wrong.  My life was simply moving me towards other things...pushing me not to become complacent with my head among the weeds.  

(I do still plan on growing what herbs I can in our limited sunshine but the urban farming project has been set aside until a day when I have a yard and a lot of sunshine again.)

The J-Rex's and my homeschooling adventure has also come to it's inevitable end.  As much as I loved homeschooling and still miss it despite remembering how crazy-making it can be, the J-Rex is ridiculously happy to be learning in a public school environment with her peers now.  I could write for ages on the transition from homeschool to public and the ways it has affected both the J-Rex and I, positively and negatively, but I'll save that particular soapbox for another day, another blog post. 

The point is, I'm no longer homeschooling and no longer gardening (with significant intensity, at least). Instead, these previous ventures have been replaced with an incredible journey of self-discovery - one that began as I began to write again through this blog - that has led to some amazing opportunities, convergent life-career paths, and more.  

The center of my world is closer now that it has been for years to what I cared about in my youth. I've been spending more and more of my time writing, philosophizing, daydreaming, and, for the first time, finding the fire within me to do whatever it takes to make as many of those daydreams come true as I can. I have started on the path of a dream career in writing and editing (I'll write more about this later - another case of "another day, another blog post"), am helping both my Mother-in-Law and my Husband launch their own businesses based off their own personal passions, and am getting back in touch with my spiritual journey. 

The J-Rex is getting old enough now that our conversations harken back to the ones I began having with my dad at this age, with that strange mix of philosophy, politics, and children's pop culture that will never be duplicated again in her life…at least, not until she has children someday. Now, instead of all learning all the time, the center of our world together has a lot to do with My Little Pony, a lot to do with All The Animals Everywhere, and a little to do with the life lessons I'm always looking for moments to teach her about.

Even my social life has gone through a massive evolution over the past year, with me finding myself drifting from some, moving closer to others, and meeting entirely new and excitingly different groups to spend my time with. Throw in this new venture into journalism and all the work connections in the metaphysical and spiritual community, and I feel like a newly emerged social butterfly again. 

Everything is changing. Life, myself, my family…even the world as a whole is evolving. All this with a rapidity we haven't seen in a long time. I tend to resist change but, this time, I'm working to accept it, flourish in it, even.  

As we evolve, as I evolve, so will my content. I'm now at a place of experimenting, learning, and exploring - one of my favorite of the regular phases we tend to go through in life - so, expect to see a bit more of that here.  Or, rather, expect nothing so that you will always be pleasantly surprised.