For many, the school year is ending in the next couple of weeks. I hear many parents on the playground talk about how wonderful it will be to have the kids home, not make lunches, and other dreams of vacation bliss. I, on the other hand, am a bit freaked out.
I am a fan of the school year schedule. Knowing what is happening with my child from day to day. As I am still working on various projects and not in your typical 8-5 type job, I also enjoy knowing that we have a schedule down. The summertime presents the need for camps which includes spending more money. That would be fine but you discover when you have children that camps can be one day, half a day, halftime for a week, full time for 4 out of 5 weekdays, etc. School is 8-3, generally with on-site aftercare when needed. Camp, well you don’t want your kid to look back on summertime and say, “that was the year my parent’s abandoned me in that horrid summer program”. Parents want their kid to be happy but would prefer not going completely broke in the process.
This summer we have come up with a variety of options. We have our week away scheduled, we have the majority of time covered. A few half-day camps, most full day camps with a smattering of dance camps (i.e. one-hour classes scheduled twice a week for a month). If you work, as many parents do, and you want this sort of variety, you hopefully have a flexible employer who perhaps allows you to work from home. Otherwise, you might need a chauffeur for the underaged child to get from activity to activity. Fortunately, parents, mostly Mom’s, have created a network to share this challenge.
It would be wonderful to find a way to quantify these skills in the real world. For example, “coordinated multiple and conflicting events for the client (child) including budgeting, transport, and meals.” This is something I did when working in film but that sounded much more interesting than the role I have now.
Meanwhile, I applied to use some of my mindfulness training of recent years managing two elder-care and one child, to a real-world application. Luminosity is looking for someone to do a guided meditation. Ultimately it will come down to whether someone likes my actual voice and pacing. I’m hoping my audition actually gets heard. I mean how novel to use tools I’ve learned in life and actually get paid for passing them along.
Like writing though, I won’t hold my breath. But if anyone out there has an in, let me know. Meanwhile, as the school year winds down, listen to the soothing gyration of the washing machine. The water twisting back and forth, like waves, lapping on the shore of the beach. Your breathing in time with the lapping, tapping the keyboard. You find mindfulness where you can sometimes.