A Subtle Shift in Priorities

Well just take a look at how timely this blog entry is. Ha! Fantastic.

Recently, which is to say 'the last few months', I have not been enjoying the prospect of going to Judo. I would realize it was Monday, my normal Judo day, and my stomach would sink. Judo isn't that bad, not really, but compared to some of the other things I do with my evenings, it just always felt like a waste of an evening. We often spend a frustrating amount of time just talking about stuff, and I've never felt like my progress has been that marked. I got my black belt, I guess, but I still never really felt like I earned it, but just going to judo because it was 'judo day' hasn't really felt right in a while.

I sat down with Jessie to talk about my 'crisis of activities', something that comes up every few years, and she told me exactly what you'd expect her to tell me: if you're not enjoying it, then why are you going? We have our Kinect at home for exercise (and it keeps kicking my ass), there's no need to go if I'm not enjoying it. So for now, I've decided to take a hiatus from Judo. As Jess reminded me: I can always go back. They've been doing Judo for a couple of centuries now, I don't think they're going to quit anytime soon.

So I certainly don't lack from good uses of time in my life, or at least not fulfilling ones. Miniature painting continues to be great fun, and I'm getting better at it with every mini I paint. I even have a permanent home for my painting, now, as opposed to just keeping it in the library and moving it every time we want to play cards or something. I carved out a little corner of my studio and now have my stuff all set up for all the painting I could want. I also shuffled my studio over so it's now in the same upstairs room as the guest bed. We can use the old studio room for...other things.

There's also Piano, which I am attempting to be as diligent as possible about, because you know what practice makes, don't you? I did get a little down on it because, like most of my hobbies, it's not really leading to anything. I'm not going to any recitals, or joining a band, or anything. Though the better I get at piano, the easier it will be to compose music in the future, which is nice. Still, though, playing the opening to Journey's “Don't Stop Belivin'” is a pretty good way to end a day, so I keep at it. If anyone knows of a band in Austin looking for a piano player without a whole lot of time to invest...let me know.

But if I'm cutting back on Judo, perhaps it would be a good time for me to try doing something else with my time, eh? Maybe a little...VOLUNTEERING? Yeah, I know great minds think alike.

I scrounged through various volunteer listings online, hoping to find something that could make some use of my expertise. Something maybe with education, too, because I really, really like education. I ended up signing up for Austin Partners in Education. I start on Tuesday.

I'm volunteering! It's quite exciting. All I saw on the sign-up-form online was that they needed people to help with groups of two-or-three middle schoolers who need help learning math. Sounds up my alley, yes? But I had some questions, which I brought to the lunchtime training session I went to last week. Turns out this group has around 2000 volunteers (!) and what they do is one class a week, the whole math class meets with a group of probably 10 volunteers who guide them through the lesson for the day. The job is to ask questions, get them thinking, and generally show our excitement for the subject matter at hand. I can do that.

I'm coming in the the middle of the school year, which usually means I'll be replacing someone who couldn't make it through the year (Life happens, you know?) so I'm hoping that I'm up to the standard set by my predecessor. If this goes well, and I've only got something like 7 more classes before the end of the year, maybe I'll sign up for a full year next time.

Of course, right after signing up for this, the local community magazine came out with their summary of a boatload more volunteer opportunities, so I can certainly expand if I want. I may have to, if I'm going to help Sandlin meet her goal.

So let's see, what do you need to know about Tyler. He's coming up on his terrible twos. They're not really that terrible, cause he's such a great kid normally, but you can definitely see where the beginnings of a furious little id are going to create a few frustrating afternoons before we get him properly civilized. He doesn't want to share, he gets angry when he can't have is way...you know...kid stuff. On the plus side, the house next door to us sold, and we met the neighbors today while we were getting ready to take Tyler out biking. (We bike, he rides behind). They have a 9-year-old boy, and a 2-year old boy as well. Score! Jess made them cookies. They move in tomorrow. We know pretty much nothing more than that (except their names) but we are going to bring them cookies, so I expect we will be fast friends.

Tyler is starting to sing. You have to know what you're listening for, because he can't carry a tune yet and he only get's about 70% of the words, but we've heard him do 'Twinkle Twinkle', '5 Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed', 'The ABCs,' and 'The Itsy-Bitsy Spider', with hand motions and everything. He is also really excited because he gets to go to Disneyland for his birthday, or at least near his birthday, and Nana and Grandpa are going to be there too. Though to be honest, at this point the trip is about 30% for Tyler and 70% for Jessie. Also, we get to visit some friends in LA while we are out there, so good fun then, too.

-N