A Crush, Free Will & Brainwashing

I’m crushing on a writer/blogger/Wisconsinite who is seemingly fitting all of my career needs, chief among them, getting to my goals through blogging? Somewhere else in her impressive litany of blogs I see her contradict herself by saying you can’t make a living by blogging,then I  realize I’ve synonomized “goals” with “making a living” something she also warns against. Alas, I know my purpose but goals and blogging are uncertain. Sigh, wisdom mixed with confusion is intoxicating…

So, I am having a life-dilemma/crisis/mom-guilt/gut-instinct about a lot of issues surrounding the same subject.  

SUBJECT: Am I Doing because I WANT TO? or Have I been Brainwashed?

Issue 1: Beauty.

Look, I like to look beautiful. I’m no model, but as someone with good intentions but poor delivery once told my mother, who emerged from the boudoir (the farmhouse bedroom) for an evening out,“Wow, y’all can make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.” Well, honey, in about 5 minutes, I can juice this goose.  So I know that it takes a bit of, shall we say, “propping it up” for me to look airbrushed, spotless, and a bit enhanced, but I have myself a little tricked into thinking I like the “ceremony” and “art” of makeup, but I do. I like to look “good” whatever the latest convention of that is, and it’s not about the look, it’s about the reception I get from people who see me.  If we’re not lying to one another, people pay attention to attractive people. I like positive attention, actually, and I’m talking about low-hanging-fruit— making a return at Wal-Mart without a receipt. Things are just easier when you’re pretty. But I can also pass as ugly. No make up I can be as plain as well, most of us are. Normal, naturally beautiful, but not, “perfect.”  So do I apply this mask because I want to take the time, because I’m making an effort? or because I’m falling into the fold of mutual brainwashing that we should all be pretty to get attention, At any rate, my husband helped me cancel my subscription to INSTYLE, and well, Dustin Hoffman would like you to pay attention to some very interesting homely women and he’ll cry to prove it.

Issue 2: Homeschooling.

I really want to do it. I know in my gut I should. And still, I daydream about the horrors of my uninformed child, gawking, tripping over cool-kids insults and worst of all, I worry that I’ll get tired, like I do sometimes, and put him in front of PBS’s Wildcratz, or worse, our new secret obsession Nickelodeon’s Sanjay and Craig (filled with awesome cool-kid insults, crisis averted).   When I let outside influence in, it leads to constant confusion.  My mother-in -aw says “volunteer at his school and make schools a better place.”Look, I want to,  But I ain’t nobody got time to take care of everyone else’s kids too, I’m trying to put one super decent human out there. I also have an only child, which I worry about him with friends, and worse, the wrong kind of friends. I know it’s time I take some of my own advice:

Step 1: Set life values

Step 2: Follow Step 1 relentlessly (esp. when other’s do not)

Step 3. Let go

In other words, am I not homeschooling because I am worried about the fear of  ”under-socialization” or him not learning enough, or is that brainwashing?

Issue 3: Am I living My Happiness, or not-stirring the pot?

Am I eating/spending my time/living the way I want? I keep feeling that I want to live in the country again, the way I grew up. I want to travel the world again, with my son. I keep listing the reasons it’s not happening. I know currently it’s not happening, but it doesn’t mean I can’t put my energy toward it now. Way before we had kids, my husband and I  moved from downtown Chicago to this small town, cultureshock enough, maybe not my cutureshock from America to Korea, but enough. Now though, after 5 years, I’m ready to return to my roots, to a country lifestyle. I want to see my son run, without me yelling “you can’t go in there, that’s someone’s yard.” And when they’re not home, it makes no sense to my heart nor his. This week I taught my son how to chase a pig, I picked rasberries and was with my father. I literally felt as if it was a simple heaven, uncomplicated, beautiful, marvelous.

 I have a friend from London, my beloved city, and she misses her heaven, a hot water bottle and civility, I urged her to create it in her microcosm. May I have the courage to do it too.