GandK's journal, part II

Where are you and where are you going?
User avatar
GandK
Posts: 2059
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:00 pm

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by GandK »

--- TWO YEARS LATER --

We are living the dream! Except for humanity.

Our RV is parked in a church parking lot in Lake Charles, LA. We did hurricane cleanup here just over a year ago, and they've asked us to come back and volunteer more. We returned wholeheartedly. They've given us free parking, free electricity and an office in the building as well as their friendship. This is a wonderful community and the opportunity to volunteer full time is just what we wanted retirement to be. This week we are mudding and sanding walls, and helping a family move.

The last few years have been peculiar for us as nomads. During 2020 and 2021 we traveled in 21 different states. Most places were delighted to have tourists/visitors show up because Covid had slowed their guests to such a trickle. Very few places were masked, except in their stores. Probably they could have done with a bit more. :? The only place that we felt was over the top about Covid was Ann Arbor, oddly, where the whole town seemed to be wrapped in plastic and trying to out-safety each other. My 11yo remarked that that their public library - where no one could enter or touch the books and the librarians would only speak to you through a screen, and which additionally smelled strongly of Lysol - was strsight out of a science fiction novel. That establishment was not an outlier, as it turned out. We all drove away wondering what in hell goes on in Ann Arbor.

September 1 through December 1 2021 we went to Greece. So beautiful! A few of our favorite pics:

Image
The flight into Crete (I snapped that out the plane window)

Image
The backyard of one of our Airbnbs

Image
A scenic overlook on Corfu

Image
The ruins at Phillipi

Image
Me on a rooftop on Hydra, an island with no cars

We'd been to Europe several times, but never to Greece. We'd intended to volunteer with 3 different organizations while there. All 3 had stopped work though because of the virus. And no two airports in Greece had the same set of standards for boarding planes. Flying from one island to another was a major headache every time, not because we didn't have our papers in order, but because whatever the government web site had told us to do to prepare, the airline insisted on something different, and it changed weekly.

There were Covid strikes too. The night we left Thessaloniki, there were riots complete with tear gas and water cannons because the government was imposing shots on teachers and health care workers. While in Paralio Astros, there was a restaurant strike because the government said non-tourists who hadn't been vaccinated could no longer do outdoor dining at restaurants (they'd already been banned from indoor). Since in small Greek towns that's nearly all of a restaurant's patrons, the restaurants all shut down.

We met so many amazing Greek people, made friends we still chat with and had lots of adventures. I wish we could have gotten to know everybody without all this stress, though. We want very much to go back to Europe once Covid is over.

Now that we're back stateside and the holidays are over, I am trying to refocus on two things specifically: physical health and spiritual integrity.

WRT the former, I have refocused the family on healthy eating to the best of my ability, although my husband still shows up with bags of Doritos in spite of my filling the fridge with washed and precut vegetables. You can lead a horse to water, but you cant force-feed him celery. Separately, we have two engaged sons, and each of their fiancées has asked me for a cookbook of my recipes as a wedding gift. But many of my recipes are not even written down. I just do what I remember my grandmother doing. I am now putting everything down for them.

Spiritual integrity...

We are practicing Christians, volunteering at a church. But I still question everything I do. Does it align with my values, is it an accurate reflection of Who I Am. I'm certain my life more closely aligns with my beliefs than at any earlier point, but that nagging "is this right?" never leaves me. It's as if I believe every day is a test, and if my beliefs, words and actions are even fractionally out of alignment, I fail. I've never heard of someone feeling Imposter Syndrome as a member of a faith, but I suppose it's possible. My husband says I feel this way because I have too much time on my hands. I suspect he's partially correct. If anything is a luxury belief, insufficiency of spiritual integrity strikes me as one. People fighting for physical or career survival would never navel-gaze about this sort of purity. So I may be an idiot about this.

Still, it's there.

Nicolino
Posts: 60
Joined: Thu Dec 06, 2018 6:16 am

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by Nicolino »

Exciting! The view of that Airbnb backyard made me drool!

Married2aSwabian
Posts: 265
Joined: Thu Jan 07, 2021 7:45 pm

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by Married2aSwabian »

GandK wrote:
Mon Jan 17, 2022 5:55 pm

The last few years have been peculiar for us as nomads. During 2020 and 2021 we traveled in 21 different states. Most places were delighted to have tourists/visitors show up because Covid had slowed their guests to such a trickle. Very few places were masked, except in their stores. Probably they could have done with a bit more. :? The only place that we felt was over the top about Covid was Ann Arbor, oddly, where the whole town seemed to be wrapped in plastic and trying to out-safety each other. My 11yo remarked that that their public library - where no one could enter or touch the books and the librarians would only speak to you through a screen, and which additionally smelled strongly of Lysol - was strsight out of a science fiction novel. That establishment was not an outlier, as it turned out. We all drove away wondering what in hell goes on in Ann Arbor.
I can tell you one thing that goes on in AA: education. It’s the most highly educated town in the US. Maybe the 21 other states you visited struggle with understanding math and science. It also has one of the best and biggest hospital systems in the Midwest. Like other hospitals, they’ve been completely overwhelmed at times by Covid patients over the past two years. I’m sure this plays a role in how careful they are throughout the entire town.
Last edited by Married2aSwabian on Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

shaz
Posts: 420
Joined: Mon Aug 02, 2021 7:05 pm
Location: Colorado, US

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by shaz »

Your retirement sounds amazing. The idea of doing volunteer work to help the local community where you are parked makes me feel better about retiring from non-profit work.

theanimal
Posts: 2628
Joined: Fri Jan 25, 2013 10:05 pm
Location: AK
Contact:

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by theanimal »

Thanks for the update. Your trip sounds like it was a lot of fun, the pictures make it look outstanding! Regarding the thoughts on integrity, I wouldn't beat yourself up too much. It sounds like you are thinking about it a lot and are already making headway to your ideal. Maybe it'd be worth thinking: at what point you'd be satisfied with the alignment of your beliefs and actions? If you can't pin that down, then it may just be a non concrete goal that is not acutely attainably. So instead of feeling more fulfilled by pursuing that, it leads to more thinking, frustration, anxiousness and so on down the line.

jacob
Site Admin
Posts: 15907
Joined: Fri Jun 28, 2013 8:38 pm
Location: USA, Zone 5b, Koppen Dfa, Elev. 620ft, Walkscore 77
Contact:

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by jacob »

Spiritual integrity or emotional authenticity is an Fi issue.
Behavioral integrity is an Si issue.

The higher Fi or Si is in your stack, the more conflicting it is.
Image

Dave
Posts: 545
Joined: Fri Dec 19, 2014 1:42 pm

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by Dave »

Awesome update GandK, nice to hear you all are doing well!

Loved the pictures, and the setup with the church in Lake Charles seems great for you. Do you yourselves staying there for a while, or making recurring stops by every so often?

User avatar
GandK
Posts: 2059
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:00 pm

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by GandK »

shaz wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 8:42 am
Your retirement sounds amazing. The idea of doing volunteer work to help the local community where you are parked makes me feel better about retiring from non-profit work.
Your comment made me so happy. Thank you. I love what we are now able to do.
Dave wrote:
Tue Jan 18, 2022 6:20 pm
Do you yourselves staying there for a while, or making recurring stops by every so often?
We're not sure. While traveling around the country the past few years, we received invitations to come work at 3 different places. This is the place that needed the most help. Basically we want to stay here as long as we are able to be useful in this place. When we think we can't move the needle any longer, the plan is to reach out to the other two places to see if either of them still want help.

@theanimal

Great point. I slept on your question and @Jacob's related chart and no, I can't identify the point at which I'd be at 100% integrity. I can't even imagine how I'd measure it. I actually started Googling this and then laughed at myself. There is not discrete language for what I think I must achieve here. This should be a signal that something is amiss. No one outside of me thinks what I'm doing is insufficient. So why do I? Probably the answer is prior Fe religious programming.

AxelHeyst
Posts: 2118
Joined: Thu Jan 09, 2020 4:55 pm
Contact:

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by AxelHeyst »

For what it's worth, your struggle with spiritual integrity lines up well with my own experience from 16-22yo, and then same same but different after I left organized religion. Arguably I just ported the same spiritual anxiety to secular structures of meaning (e.g. being a good steward of the earth, environmentalism...)

For me, what's helped is digging into my unconscious beliefs about self-worth. How does your *unconscious* answer the question "What has to be true in order for me to prove myself worthy of love?" What your conscious mind knows the 'correct' answer to be is pretty irrelevant. In the early days, just asking the question would immediately make me either cry, hit stuff, or both.

I knew the doctrine of grace meant that I simply existed in a state of being worthy of love, but I'd internalized the "for all have sinned" bit, and hence assumed I was scum unless I could *act* perfectly.

7Wannabe5
Posts: 9372
Joined: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:03 am

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by 7Wannabe5 »

What fun you’ve been having!

Ann Arbor is pretty much my hometown. It can be a bit of a weird as well as wonderful place, but mostly they get it right. Death rate per million in Washtenaw County currently stands at 1200 vs 3100 for rest of state.

User avatar
GandK
Posts: 2059
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:00 pm

Thoughts on this site, on life and on 2022

Post by GandK »

After a conversation with my son the other day, I went looking through old threads on this site for a particular topic. In meandering down memory lane, I realized several things.

1. I've been here since 2011. More than a decade. This was a shock... I definitely lost track of time.
2. I've posted more than 2,000 times. Also a shock. I don't typically look at statistics like these, but I wouldn't have thought it was half that.
3. The culture (of the Internet, not just this site) has changed a lot since 2011.
4. I remembered vaguely that we had open discussions about lots of sensitive topics. In thumbing through them I was beside myself. Repeatedly. Through today's lens, how did we even pull off civil discourse on all the giant issues that hurt people? There's no way some of those conversations could take place, online, today. Anywhere.
5. I miss certain folks who are gone or who have gone dark.
6. Sometimes change sucks.

Anyway, my older son is asking my advice left and right because I'm about to become a grandmother. They are due on Easter Sunday. At his request, I'm trying to compile a sort of advice book for adulthood. (With recipes, LOL.) He could find advice for life online, so I assume he wants my perspective as well as my advice. And this site has a lot of my perspective. Way more than I'd assumed... 2,000 comments. Sheesh.

I find myself focusing a lot on my own grandmothers right now, and becoming closer with older women. With this new-to-me relationship coming, I am asking myself what kind of grandmother I want to be, and seeking positive examples.

I am happy. I am retired, spending time with my family, and making a positive difference every day. Apart from physical health, what more is there?

Aside: is it weird to say that? That one is just plain happy? When so much of the Internet is focused on some form of suffering, it feels rude.

We are still volunteering in Lake Charles. We will be here until at least May 7. After that I'm not sure what will happen. I love this community. We all do. There are work and church projects all week long, and it's beyond encouraging to see the results of your efforts every day. But Louisiana weather is neither kind to my migraines at any time of the year, nor physically pleasant in any other way in summer. I'd love to eventually end up in the Arizona/Nevada/Utah corridor, where crazy barometric pressure swings would be a less frequent issue for my head than they are here on the Gulf.

User avatar
mountainFrugal
Posts: 1125
Joined: Fri May 07, 2021 2:26 pm

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by mountainFrugal »

In your reflections and summarizing things for your son I am curious what you have changed your mind on the most in the past 10 years of interacting with folks on the forum? It could be little things or large things. If now sensitive to discuss things, maybe a short PM? Thanks!
GandK wrote:
Sun Feb 13, 2022 12:17 pm
Aside: is it weird to say that? That one is just plain happy? When so much of the Internet is focused on some form of suffering, it feels rude.
I think that living a life well lived should be discussed more, especially if it centers around simple pleasures and service to other humans.

User avatar
GandK
Posts: 2059
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:00 pm

Re: GandK's journal, part II

Post by GandK »

mountainFrugal wrote:
Sun Feb 13, 2022 3:51 pm
In your reflections and summarizing things for your son I am curious what you have changed your mind on the most in the past 10 years of interacting with folks on the forum? It could be little things or large things. If now sensitive to discuss things, maybe a short PM? Thanks!
Interesting question. I've been persuaded by several people here on several issues to take a step or two forward or back, either politically or socially. This is a group of people who, by the very nature of what we're all trying to do, are actively seeking new ideas. While the Politics forum is now closed, the seeking mindset remains in most people here. And to answer your specific question, the one thing that has changed the most because of other people on this board's input is my attitude to money. The shift from seeing money as positive riches, to seeing it as one possible tool to solve any given problem, to seeing it as an expression of time, and finally seeing it as a necessary enabler of what I truly want. That shift had more to do with listening to and processing the remarks of people here than any other factor I can point to. And my investment strategies, therefore, to a lesser degree, changed because of them. There are relative geniuses on this forum, financial and otherwise. I am not one. At times I've just been able to sit back and soak it all up. The benefits are tangible today.

User avatar
GandK
Posts: 2059
Joined: Mon Sep 19, 2011 1:00 pm

2021's finances, and what homeschooling looks like

Post by GandK »

Taxes are underway. We didn't spend much. In a home of three, we came in at about 1.4 JAFI apiece, averaged out. Had we not gone to Greece for 3 months, it would have been less than 1 JAFI each, averaged.

BUT. I continue to feel like that number is deceptive and that our standard of living is closer to 2 or 2.5 JAFI. This discrepancy is due to many reasons: one of our household members is 11 and uses fewer resources, the church we are volunteering with lets us park here rent free and gives us free hookups, as full-time volunteers we have free meals (Cajun food, no less) cooked for us left and right, to name just a few of these extenuations. In short, I was shocked at the amount of bang we got for our buck in 2021. In a lot of ways we are living pretty high on the hog.

Homeschooling

I have spent the last few weeks working nonstop preparing lessons for 6th grade, which C (11yo son) will start on March 7th. We school year round.

About a year ago, the three of us sketched out the classes we thought he'd be taking for each year of high school, and have worked backward from there to put together a course plan for every year of school that both meets college requirements and plays to his specific strengths. I would not have made those decisions sooner than age 10 for him... we would not yet have had a good idea of what all his strengths were.

After choosing a trajectory, we then chose curricula for each class. This was not easy at all. In a public school (in the US, at least) these decisions are always made for you. Who knew there were upwards of 180 6th grade math programs to choose from, for school systems and homeschooling parents? And that's just the math. He has 7 classes this year, and 6 for every other year between now and graduation. That's 43 sets of books to evaluate. It's insane.

Once we picked a specific book set or online course for each class, I then had to divide this coming year's work into 180 units for everything except Latin (it was already divided), as there are 180 "days of instruction" required of me as a homeschooling parent. A lot of parents probably fudge this to some degree; I do not. I spent the last few weeks dividing out 6th grade's work into those 180 units for each class, and writing out the lessons in his planner for each day. So far I've copied them all out through May.

Whenever he does school, he goes to the planner page, and does that day's assignments in whatever order he chooses, and marks them off as he completes them. He takes breaks whenever he needs to. Most lessons are in physical textbooks or on Kindle books, one (the Latin) is online entirely because I don't speak any, and one lesson has periodic video instruction. He asks me or his dad for help with daily assignments when he needs it, but he usually does not unless we are introducing a new concept. (Example: last week in math, we introduced volume.)

Our school schedule looks like this: 48 weeks of instruction, where the rotation is 4 day week, 4 day week, 4 day week, 3 day week... this equals 180 school days. Plus we have the other 4 weeks off, if we need them.

The free day each week is flexible for us, not fixed. Sometimes there's a holiday, a sick day, a travel day, doctor visits, etc. Sometimes he just comes to me and says, "Mom, I need a day off." Doesn't happen often, so we take one when he asks. He's had a lot of autonomy from an early age with school, so he has learned how to budget his time well. This is one of the greatest benefits of homeschooling IMO.

When C finishes his entire day's work, and we've checked everything, he gets his daily hour of "electronic time," usually spent on the Switch or on YouTube. He can also choose to start the next school day early. Occasionally he does that, if he wants the next day to be a light day.

It took us a few years of homeschooling to migrate onto this plan, but we all really enjoy it. Once the year kicks off, his dad and I just need to refresh ourselves enough each week to stay a bit ahead of wherever C is. (Smarter than a 5th grader and all that.)

Anyone asking "Why Latin?" My son chose it. G's family is from Italy, actually from Latium where Latin began. That personal connection to his dad's homeland, combined with his love of history, made him choose Latin over the several other languages his father and I went out of our way to introduce him to. :? He's passionate about it, and in the era of Google Translate, I have to say that the passion is probably more important than the specific foreign language he studies.

Homeschooling has been a definite win for us. Mostly we plan all the lessons with C's input, and then just stay out of his way. Apart from the ongoing challenges of being a dyslexic writer - yesterday he wrote a two page paper with all his "j"s backwards when his two earlier drafts had them all pointing the right way - he's pulled ahead in everything. I really think the cooperative nature of our planning, and the tailoring of his curricula and classes to him specifically, has greatly contributed to his ongoing love of learning and his constant curiosity. I believe those will serve him very well. As demanding as it is on me, I wouldn't trade homeschooling for anything. He loves it, and so do we.

Post Reply