2020 Reflections

I all-but-abandoned my blog in 2020. Managing all the extra drama and responsibilities brought to us by the Pandemic meant that there was no time or brain space for writing, very few moments for reading, and a lot of solving of solitaire boards. I spent a lot of time on problems I could resolve while all of the ones I can’t solve rolled in the back of my head. I cooked, organized, ran laundry, walked, talked, and parented. I tutored, scrolled, and planned. We took a lot of sunset walks, so I have more pictures of the Oklahoma sky on my phone than photos of my children. I didn’t write for myself almost at all. I did write some for Homeschool Oklahoma.

Over here, I have a herd of mancubs who don’t want to be talked about in public. Most of them don’t want to be photographed and don’t want to have silly stories told about them anymore. They are in that space between childhood and adulthood where their bodies are growing rapidly and they aren’t sure who they are. They do their schoolwork mostly independently, though we check in together regularly to make sure they stay on track.

Micah is now eighteen and a freshman at ORU. He completed his first semester of formal school successfully and is excited for the second. Overall, he is happy with his home education experience and uses the skills he learned in all of his university classes.

Josiah is fourteen and over six feet tall. He is working his way through CC’s Challenge 1 and reforming his way of forming an argument. Since he needs to argue regularly, I’m glad he’s learning to form reasonable discussions instead of just saying that everything he is arguing against is “stupid.” He still does Latin with me every day, and he still thinks it’s stupid to learn a dead language. But he hasn’t chosen a living language yet, so he can’t see the connections he will see later.

Gideon is thirteen and mid-growth spurt. He is in Challenge B and learning logic, which is also making him easier to argue with. He gets the most supervision because he’s had the least time to develop good habits. He does Latin with me every day, but he complains less because he has seen how the vocabulary translates to other languages he plays with on Duolingo.

Jon is writing new books and publishing them through BPlearning. He’s also working full-time in digital research and development for Specialized Bicycles as well as writing for Mind Matters and serving as a Fellow for the Discovery Institute, a teacher at Asbury UMC, and a Trustee for Homeschool Oklahoma.

2020 feels like a wash to me. It was a year of showing up, doing things as fast as I can, and escaping into solvable puzzles. A few notable good things that came out of it were our first homeschool graduate and three boys being baptized into the church.

So, we stand here, in our vacation week, on the threshold of 2021, waiting to see what comes next.