I spent a while today writing the letter for withdrawing our children from school. It feels like I must be bragging/lying/exaggerating when I list off our qualifications, materials, and philosophy… but uhm… yeah that’s just true. We are, in fact, unusually qualified to home educate our children. We did this on purpose.

The kids are relaxed in a way I haven’t seen them relax in a long time. That’s nice.

I am currently somewhere in the middle of five books and only because I finished one a few minutes ago. Reading about being an intensive person, another PTSD book, a grimoire for kitchen witchery, and fruits and vegetables for Scotland. I finished the rereading of a fantasy book focused on friendships. For every twenty pages I plow through of the other four books I get through a whole fantasy book. Learning feels hard again. But I’m trying.

I made the kids negotiate what a school schedule is going to look like for them for the rest of this school year. It’s… a lot more relaxed than it was in the past. Partially because they are at grade level so I don’t need to be fussy. That feeling of panic I had about them not doing enough is gone. That is a gift we got from school.

EC now has a bunch of “funny” stories about the teacher accusing her of making up words because ECs vocabulary is so broad. Sure, there are some maths skills we didn’t perfectly nail but that would be true from any curriculum in existence. MC will have a bit of extra maths for a while but I’m not concerned and we will indeed work on handwriting. I am glad she can take off on reading without waiting for her handwriting to be good enough, She read the entire book series I gave her for Christmas (that I bought because I was told it was “the thing” for her grade level) on Christmas before mid-afternoon. Well. It’s kind of like when my mom refused to buy me any more of The Babysitters Club books. She’s not at grade level anymore, Toto.

Noah and I are having some feelings about the lack of opportunities to date, but here we are late at night on our own computers just… blurgh. He would respond with vigor if I wanted to pay attention to him. It’s not that I don’t want to. But I don’t want to. I’m tired. It’s not the kids it’s life.

It’s kind of funny that the school thinks that they need to be in school to get a proper education; I’ve planned 12 hours a week of direct instruction and they will progress as fast or faster than their peers do. So far the kids say the thing they will miss the most is not getting to do the dance section of PE. ONCE THE FUCKING BOAT ARRIVES I am going to dig out my copy of Irish dance instructions from the Plough and we can do kitchen dancing. Noah knows the basics, I can quickly pick stuff up again and teach it. It will be fun. Yes, we will be limited to stuff that needs four people, but that’s alright.

I’m struggling with being deep in my feels about life. I feel so much (internally imposed) pressure to try harder on reaching out to people but I also feel depleted. What does friendship mean?

Does friendship mean that you are obligated to show up a certain number of hours? That you are obliged to place a certain number of phone calls or send a certain quantity of emails or letters? I carry a lot of my friendships and I don’t know how to feel about that. I don’t carry every relationship. Some people reach out to me more than I do them… not many… but a couple.

I feel like I’m at this interesting point in my internal cycles. I am utterly over pouring out energy into relationships. I’m over feeling I have to earn people or love or a place. If I have to work that hard to be loved I don’t fucking care about being loved. Is that awful? Is it healthy? I don’t know. I feel like this period of apathy is part of needing to separate, part of needing to figure out what I actually NEED as opposed to wants. I do need to be loved but I don’t need to be the life of the party.

Christmas was great. I don’t know if my kids were playacting for my benefit (will I ever trust that they feel safe enough to display their authentic emotions?) but they seemed euphoric and delighted about their presents. They got things they need and things they want and they are being given the gift of time and perspective going forward. I’m really glad we tried school. I don’t know that either child will want to try school again before university. We’ll see. I have zero desire to push them and that feels good today.

I am glad that they like me and I like them and we don’t really need the approval of other people. My kids give me a sort of validation no one else can give me, not even Noah. They want to be around me and they choose my teaching over that of other people. They see me as being the best opportunity on offer.

Damn.

The kids have noticed that their “friends” at school need them to be a very curated version of themselves in order to be tolerated. I mean, I have guidelines too–you will have table manners or else but when we are not in a restaurant… be whatever feels ok to you. I don’t need you to pretend all the time. I just need you to care about how you are impacting the people around you when they are trapped in a small space with you. Don’t be a selfish asshole. You can be loud and rude and obnoxious at other times when it is totally appropriate. Context dependent rules are a big deal. We talk a lot about how different settings require different things from our behavior.

School requires you to accept that authority cares more about minimizing the amount of work they have to do than keeping you safe. School would much rather have you shut up and accept being hit rather than stand up to bullies–if you do so you are now the problem.

My brother came up in conversation. (He can fart on command, this was relevant to our topic.) The kids asked why I don’t talk to him. I told them for a bunch of reasons that are detailed in the book they can’t read until they are adults. They said, “Oh you did bad things to him?” Nope, no I didn’t. “Did he do bad things to you?” Not really. “Then… why?” Because he is angry that I made other people stop doing bad things to me. “HE SOUNDS LIKE THE HEAD TEACHER AT SCHOOL.”

Yeah. We can withdraw from school.

I am by no means a perfect person. I fuck up. I do things I shouldn’t. I also work hard at not hurting people. I have learned to keep my opinion to myself when I think people are doing things wrong for the most part. I haven’t given anyone else parenting feedback in a very long time. We all get to parent as we see fit. Only our children get to evaluate us.

I like my kids and so far they like me more than any other teacher on offer. We will make friendships with people who share our interests (I heard about a nearby home educating family who really wants to try D&D…. Noah is great at DMing for kids…) and hobbies. Frankly the school kids here don’t do the stuff we do for fun.

I’m going to keep trying to go to the toddler activities. When I’m out of the house the big kids are going to work on programming. That’s a Noah subject and I don’t need to be present for it. If they finish their target for the day they will switch to art/music/reading. We have lots to do.

We don’t get bored. Well, I alternate between thinking boredom is a necessary part of life and thinking that only boring people get bored. We have a lot of unstructured time. We never run out of ways to fill it. Is that being bored? We make our own entertainment and we really prefer it that way. I’m taking some tips from the horse trainer lady on how to handle kid accountability on home schooling. (Her kids are in and out of school as it suits the needs of her family.)

The future is coming. Right now I’m not worried it will eat me. I’m pretty sure it will be less painful than what I have already experienced.

When I don’t write for a while I get super agitated. It’s complicated. There are many layers of things going on and I can’t write about a bunch of them and that’s really bothering me. I’m contemplating picking people I can write letters to because that at least allows me to talk to someone about what I’m thinking, but that feels loaded too. There are so many things happening. On one finger: I write because it helps me organize my thoughts and feelings. On another finger (because this is way the fuck more than two hands, yo): I write because I am leaving this documentation in the ether for my children. On another finger: I write because it helps me connect with really interesting people. On another finger: I write because it is so much better than self mutilation. On another finger: I like doing it. Writing about myself allows me to create who I want to be.

I am absolutely brimming with feelings because moving here allows all of us a fresh start. In so many ways we are leaving behind who we were and we are becoming something different. I like something different. But Noah and I created selves in the bay with great effort and work over many many years. Leaving all of that behind to start again is incredibly hard. I don’t get to walk into a room and have my reputation precede me. I have to introduce myself. I have to decide what I will say about myself.

I went to a fantastic lecture the other day about migrants and boundaries and borders. I said thank you to the speaker and she asked me a little about myself. I said her lecture was making me think a million thoughts about my own experience of moving 60+ times in the US before traveling the world and landing here. It made me think about all of the things I saw in immigrant neighborhoods in California. It made me think about all of the people I know who have crossed borders. She asked me to email her so we can continue the conversation. I haven’t yet, I was cooking and then flopping in exhaustion in between medical appointments.

I saw some really interesting looking ink at a craft fair and while I was browsing and trying to decide if I wanted to buy any I heard the creator telling another customer about how obsessed she is with painting trees. Me too.

I met a nice young man at the local shop. We got to talking and it turns out he is into D&D and he’s a literature major at the university and we exchanged phone numbers and we’ve been talking about books and comics and things.

I have been to the local munch a couple of times. I have met some really interesting people there. I am saying loudly and clearly when cute people flirt with me NOT POLY. CAN’T DATE. PROBABLY NOT EVER. I am not available, no matter how my stories about the past make me sound.

I feel bad that I haven’t been going to as many of the baby classes/events but they use half a day and utterly wear me out. I don’t get much else done on days that I go and I have had appointments and deliveries and Noah was gone. I can’t do everything. And just doing the mommy-of-a-toddler thing is… not where I am as much anymore. I am that, clearly. But it’s not my whole identity and I have to actively create a whole new identity again.

I have to be a balanced person. I have to be many things. I have to figure out how to talk to people and ask them questions that don’t revolve around tech and I have to have a self that is not defined by all the communities I have bumped into. I have to be a whole new creature.

I wanted this and I’m doing it.

On the days when I get to go ride my bike through the city I feel intensely alive. I think of Mrs. Whatsit and I have shouted, more than once, “Wild Nights Are My Glory!” No I am not over the rain or the weather. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel brave and determined and willful. Riding my bike in pouring rain makes me laugh and grin and sing loudly because I am just so happy I get to be out in it. I get to do this. I get to be here. I… do want some waterproof trousers though. I feel a bit awkward sitting places with a soaked bottom.

I love this city of immigrants. I may be in Scotland, but a fair number of people here were not born here. Hm. Ok, I can only find data showing 7.7% of this city was born outside of the UK. A lot of the folks living here are not from Inverness, the city has doubled in ten years and that’s not because of birth rate, but they are not all international migrants. Lots of them are UK internal migrants. The city feels alive and growing. I love that most people I ask tell me their immigrant story and they tell it with great pride. When I find the rare Invernesian who was born here I tell them, “Do you know how lucky you are that you got to be born here?” They always laugh and ask me why. When I start telling them why this is my favorite city in the world the response is always, “Wow–I’ve never thought about it like that. I’ve always just wanted to complain.”

I think about it like that.

I feel lucky to be here, even with the hiccups. Even with the complications. Even with the things that are hard and aren’t going to get easier any time soon.

Life is not easy anywhere, not for anyone. Not really. Life is suffering. Life is a trial and full of tribulations. Life hurts. Life will insult you and knock you down and cause you pain.

But at least here I get water and wonderful walks up the hill where I get to come down and see a glorious hillside so beautiful that I know I am going to paint picture after picture of it before I die.

I am going to be an artist here.

I remember, years ago when we were in Rotorua New Zealand we went into a little art gallery. The artist was present working as he minded the shop. He was from the US. We asked what made him end up there. He said, “I came here on vacation and I couldn’t bring myself to leave.”

I understand, man. I understand.

I love the fog here. I love the cold, crisp air. I love that I am winterizing my garden for the first G-D time in my life. It’s fun. It’s an adventure.

I’m exhausted to the marrow of my bones. I want to do more and I really really need to do less. Noah commented that maybe we should have moved to Edinburgh, there would be more services there like therapists and specialist doctors.

No. I will learn how to manage my mental health here. I have never had solutions for my medical problems, I am just grateful that now I have names for them so I can find peace in my heart with knowing that “Yup. This is a problem. It exists. I’m not making it up. It sucks. Yup. Moving along.”

I don’t want to be in a bigger city. Maybe in 20 years when this city has grown too big for me I will want to move out to an island so I can run from people again. Who knows.

Who knows what the future will bring. Who knows what identities I will get to create. Who knows how I will spend my time or how much functionality my body will still have. I guess we’ll see.

My accent will continue to drift. I will always be a Californian. But I drop a Southern drawl into conversations when it feels fitting. I can pull up a few words that sound Australian. I can confuse people with whether or not I am Canadian, apparently. I’m sure I will pick up Scottish phrasing too.

And all of it will be me. It will never sound like just one thing. I will always be more than one thing. I will always contain multitudes. I will always be influenced by all those dead white guys writing about their walks in the woods.

People keep asking me if I have a job. I say, “Well I do a lot of work. I’m a writer and an artist and a mother of three who is overly fastidious about house work. I garden and read and try to learn as much as I can about a great many subjects. I don’t have a job, but I do have many vocations and I am lucky enough to have a partner who supports me.” Sometimes if I am feeling cheeky I say that I don’t have a job I am a burden on my partner.

My ridiculous partner who thinks of himself as a failure because he is not in the top 1% of absolutely everything he ever tries and does. We match. I know why he worries about money. I am not worried about money. I think we have all the money we require for 2020 in the bank. I think we have most of 2021’s necessary money too. I think that by the end of this contract 2021 will be covered. So in 2020 he will be trying to earn 2022’s income. I’m not worried. Cause for one thing, the bank shares payment we get for 2019 and 2020 and 2021 is probably actually enough to pay for 2022 just on its own. So really he’s shooting for earning more like 2023’s income in 2020.

We will be fine. Yes, yes we should invest some of it which makes the math look different but good grief. That’s not even touching the bank account with US dollars sitting in it (probably another year of run money) nor any investments. We’ll be fine.

That’s what we do. We make things work out. We are tremendously lucky. Noah was born on third base. I have a natural ability with budgeting and saving. We also both work like dogs. We’ll be fine.

That’s one piece of the work I do: I manage a pretty obscene amount of money. We are looking into all of the moving pieces involved in US citizens investing in the UK. We have a bank advisor and a lawyer and an accountant (two accountants, really–including a US one who used to work for the IRS on international tax returns). This shit is complicated. No advice, please. I’m already paying for the advice of quite a few experts.

The amount of money we manage is work and sometimes I feel fussed about how many layers there are… but I’m not afraid we won’t be ok. I am genuinely not. If we took out $50,000/year from investments and didn’t earn another penny we would have at least 20 years of run rate and that’s not even right because things would still grow in the meantime and the bank shares would still come and… We aren’t going to touch the investments for a long while. When we do we will have enough to get old with. We will be fine.

You have taken care of me, Noah. Someday it will be my turn to say, “See what I have done. You are safe forever.” And when we die all the money that is left can be paid forward into the world. I’m not hoarding it for my kids. Sorrynotsorry, kids.

I only had one grandparent who made it into their 80’s. I only had one great grandparent who lived into their 70’s. I am not from a long lived clan. I don’t need another 60 years of run money.

It’s weird to think about. How long do we really have left?

Long enough. And I’ll get to hold Noah’s hand the whole time.