Balancing Life's Contrasts: The Power of Punctuality and Flexibility | Day 284 of my 2023 Journal

The essential is invisible to the eye!

I am cheating with these photos. I did not take a single photo on the day in case, October 11th, 2023. Not one.

We did things you don’t usually take pictures of. You could even fall into the trap of saying they are uninteresting things to talk about. But really. Nothing is, is it?

Imagine spending an entire day of your precious life and having nothing to say about it afterward?!

So, I cheated. A few days later, I took pictures of the house we spent the day in as I am still running after my wagon.

For those late to my stories: I am this year on my Social Media and Blog sharing only my journaling challenge. Every day of the year, I share stories and reflections on what we did the day before. And a few photos. In theory, I do it every day, write about the day before. To keep myself sane and ensure I share with everyone interested the reality of what a fully nomadic and radically unschooled life looks like. If you want to follow the whole thing, head to the blog or scroll down my social media. It is all there. Every single day of the year.

But I can not stick to any rule, and one of my most important mottos is “Plan with a pencil.” We also say: “What does not bend will break.” So - sometimes, I fall off the wagon and run alongside it for a while until I find my way back up to writing every day.

I like the sharing. It still makes sense, even with only 5 or 8 likes and hardly any comments. It touches a few people, and it will become a powerful story when completed.

The case is this. Our life is somewhat backward. We look forward to days when we can study, wash clothes, work out for 2 hours, slow cook, take long showers, write emails, plan, study, and work. This day was like that.

We recorded two podcasts, the first to air the next day as we had not been recording while walking the Camino and all the days up to this one. We had run out of pre-recorded material. No problem.

Torsten Klaus is a German unschool dad with beautiful insight, vulnerable and powerful, empowering young people, and finding his way in the alternative lifestyle. It was a pleasure to talk with him. It is SelfDirected podcast episode 37. Go listen.

Later the same day, we talked with Miró - the son of Laine Liberti, who is at peace with being a case study. It made me think about the future of my children - we have talked about them but kept them behind the scenes. Maybe the time has come to enter the show and share their stories. If they are willing. The most powerful argument for unschooling, really, for the scared adults and freaked-out grandparents, is to meet an unschooled adult. So - we talked about that and quite a few other things. A minor detail I want to thank. Miró for is he reminded me of the importance of being punctual. We discussed how traveling sometimes makes us want to absorb cultural elements into the personal culture we cultivate (a lot of the same root word going on here) as a nomad and about how the reverse sometimes happens: you realize you really LIKE a cultural element not at display where you currently live.

His example, living in Mexico, is he likes to be punctual. Having lived a lot in Spain, I totally get it! Oh my god, it can annoy the hell out of me; the fact “ahora” does not translate to “now,” as in right now. It seriously means “soon” and could be tomorrow.

This also taps into my gratefulness for my best friend since forever, probably since the stars were born, Tamiko, who is half Japanese and ALWAYS on time, always a bit early. Always. Being Danish and chaotic, I learned a lot from her and my oldest son, who HATES being late. I find it always interesting how life exposes us to contrasting values and gives the challenge of staying in the flow, respecting all that is happening in the moment around us, and at the same time learning to be punctual, sticking to our word, and showing up when agreed.

Like listening to the signs of the universe and acting on impulses, yet keeping a to-do list, a plan, and a calendar, the two strategies are so different but have to co-exist in a balanced life. The book I am working on writing with a friend is about precisely this. How to find all these balances in order to have a truly great life?

We also found time for a short movie, made a to-do list for all the things that need our attention before we leave for Mexico, talked a lot about the changes that are happening within us and with the life we live, and spent a good chunk of time on our respective educations.

These things are not little things. They are big. Preparations for the next steps, becoming ready to be ready, and breathing out past processes - not that they are negative, but they need some knots tied. Basically, this was what we were doing all day in the lovely house we had rented.

With love

Cecilie Conrad

Thank you for reading
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