Just Go

Thank you all for your thoughts and ideas about living abroad. The summer option is obviously a good one. We spend some time with my extended family in St. Louis every summer which is very important to me because it’s our kids only experience with extended family and I want their cousins to be important to them. But even if we still went to that we could probably manage four weeks every summer. While the cost of flying internationally on a yearly basis feels daunting it’s obviously less than the cost of losing my position and making much less somewhere else when I come back. It also negates the need for my husband to take a leave from his job, which he’s not super interested in doing. It’s definitely a start.

We can’t travel abroad this summer and probably not the next, but maybe then we could start. My daughter will only be 12 at that point so we’ll still have quite a few summers left. And while four weeks a year will never be as effective as one entire year for my fluency, it’s certainly better than nothing.

And yes, I recognize money isn’t everything and no one looks back and wishes they had made more. But I sometimes wonder if people don’t wish they had picked a job with more earning power. Living where I do, with the cost of living as high as it is, I definitely wish that most of the time. But maybe I’ll feel differently at the end of my life. Maybe by then what I earned will feel like enough, plenty even.

I was in a funk this week. I couldn’t manage to show up here, even though I tried. Yesterday was especially hard. I spent a ton of time putting together a set of stations for my block day and my second class shit all over it. I left school feeling like a failure and wondering why I keep trying to do this when it never seems to get better. It was demoralizing.

I was supposed to go to martial arts last night but I also had to take my son earlier so he’d be ready for his next belt test. By the time I got them both home and fed I really didn’t want to go back to the dojo for a 7pm class. Without my own test coming up it was easy to tell myself I could skip it. In the end, it was only because I can’t go to my two classes on Saturday that I pushed myself out the door.

And of course I was glad I went. We practiced all the new green belt techniques I am so excited to learn. And it was nice to focus on myself during class and talk to other adults afterward. I even had a conversation about my day where I recognized that I’ve had far fewer days that feel demoralizing this year, which was part of why it was hitting me so hard. I left feeling better about everything.

All that to say, I was reminded again that I’m almost aways glad when I go. And I supposed I’ve learned that lesson enough times that I rarely let the voices that urge me to stay home win over. Instead I’m more inclined to listen to the voices that tell me to just go.

Just go.