Tag: studying

Transition

biskupin_poland_too-many-eggs-_-too-many-baskets

Too many eggs and too many baskets*

A while ago I wrote a post in which I was openly confessing my love of reading. I was saying how important it is for me to study and how important it is for me to engage with other people’s ideas. That day I was fortunate to receive a comment from Faye in which she wrote:

“Don’t let ONE aspect of who you are SWAMP other things.”

I read the comment and it was as if I was struck by thunder. I started having a serious dialogue with myself.Maybe Faye was right? Maybe studying was overcrowding other things? Maybe my research was encroaching on our family life and invading our family space a bit too much.

My books, my papers, my notes were everywhere and they were pulling my and my son’s attention pretty much constantly. You can imagine what that meant – lots of frustration and unnecessary conflict, lots of stress and mental burden. I realised then that I needed a solution.

I couldn’t sleep that night. I was seriously considering quitting my work and my research, but that felt terribly wrong to me. I know what happens to people when they quit realizing their dream prematurely, they are scarred for life  – I didn’t want that scar. Plus, on the very positive side, I thought to myself, well… I do love myself. I do love what I am doing. Why deny myself the joy that comes with it?

So I was troubled. I love my home, my family but I also love what I am doing and those very dear and very enriching aspects of my life were calling for separation. Calling for boundaries.

I was tossing and turning. I was unable to sleep through the night and then all of a sudden I had a light bulb moment – I just need an office. I immediately went online, yes, at five o’clock in the morning and right there and then I found a perfect place for myself. In a recently renovated old red brick factory I am now doing my research into multilingualism and I am teaching different languages, both in Polish and English. Maybe one day I will also teach some basic Spanish grammar and re-engage with that beautiful language that I studied at University. Once you start studying a foreign language, it really becomes part of you and not being able to speak it for a while is like not being able to access a part of yourself. It’s almost as if language imprints itself into your DNA and becomes part of your life story. It’s quite an amazing process.

Yesterday three years passed since I signed up with WordPress for the first time. The world of blogging gave me friends for life. Thank you WordPress. Thank you readers for taking the time to visit and comment.

Enjoy the Autumn!
xxx

Alicja

*Taken at Biskupin – An Open Air Museum, Poland

Be good to yourself. Learn.

kind_unkind learning

“Be good to yourself when you are learning new things.” ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

The longer I study and research, the more I am convinced that developing an inner voice that is kind makes learning less painful and more satisfying.

Kind learning is reassuring, encouraging and full of small and sweet inspirations that help us move forward. It’s this voice which formulates convincing answers to discouraging questions. This kind and eager learning voice which encourages us to enter because the water is just the right depth for us.

The voice of kind learning seeks bigger pictures and deeper meanings. It wants us to answer questions beyond the formulaic: ‘Where do you see yourself in five years time?’. It wants to know: ‘What are your values?’ ‘What do you really care about?’.  It wants us to find the authentic self and for this we ought to learn self-compassion, to learn how to be reassuring and openly honest with ourselves – seeing all of our life journey as crucial to the making of who we are. When we work and learn with our values in mind, it all starts to take shape, it starts to feel right.

“Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask what makes you come alive, and go do it. Because what the world needs is people who have come alive.” ― Howard Thurman

Looking for answers

Reading books
There is a pile of books on my bedside cabinet. Years of studying have almost conditioned me to research a little bit before I act, before I implement something new into my routines… This has of course its strengths but can also be quite constricting… I noticed this trend among my friends too… they don’t want to explore, try things out before checking online or before consulting an appropriate How to… book. I wonder where this tendency is coming from and if it is really changing us into better people, parents, workers or whether it leaves us more unsatisfied and frustrated? Is it fear of making mistakes or fear of taking responsibility for our choices? Is it information, perfection or reassurance that we’re seeking?

I love reading books. I will always read but I think I wouldn’t like to condition my child to the behaviour that I’ve described above. I would like him to try to figure things out for himself first, to develop a problem-solver attitude to life. The world needs fresh thinkers, people who are not afraid to try things out, to invent…

I know that books can nurture imagination, that they are important, if not crucial, in our children’s development… but not all the answers are in them… not all.

Indeed, the books do not know what our questions are. They might be answering different ones.

looking for answers

To allow a change to happen

Grass and sun

Education in its all forms, studying, teaching and researching, has always been a big part of my life. Irrespective what was happening, commitment to knowledge was guiding my choices, preventing me from making wrong decisions or coming to the rescue when I already made a bad one. I’ve never tried taking my eyes off books for too long – I felt uneasy if I did that – until now.

I am taking a break from the research I’ve recently been engaged in. It was a tough decision to make because what led to it were many years of hard work and determined dreaming, hundreds of sleepless nights and countless hours of learning how to gather evidence and how to express ideas (I’m still at it, by the way). Just when the library books started filling my shelves and my notebooks thickened with ink and photocopies, just when I (perhaps too proudly) started thinking of myself as a researcher, my body decided to rebel. So I’ve stopped… to allow a change to happen, to allow myself to heal and recover, to regenerate. While this is happening, I am rediscovering my days and am for the first time in my life seriously attentive to how to look after myself. I’ve never been terribly good at it but I notice that with self-care comes a better understanding of how to look after others and obviously the strength to care for them too.

It’s ironic how life works sometimes. At the very beginning of this year I wanted to make the subject of care one of the dominant themes on this blog. I didn’t think then that I would be writing about myself. Luckily, it’s summer and with it come many opportunities for entertaining healthy living: fresh fruit and vegetables are easily within reach, the sun is omnipresent and its rays keep sneaking through to us even when we try to escape them, the garden invites us irresistibly, and friends and family give us excuses to travel. Regeneration away from our usual four walls, away from our heaps of unsorted paper and endless to do lists is what makes the biggest difference. It allows us to stock up on good energy and boy do we need that. The summer doesn’t last forever and before we know it, it is … I won’t say it. I’ll let the summer linger a little longer..

‘Bene così ‘. – It’s good like this.

Alex Britti. Bene così . Song.

“There is no secret to success except hard work and getting something indefinable which we call ‘the breaks.”

~ Countee Cullen

 

Those cups of tea that we ought to be drinking together

IMG_3617

I made a choice a while ago to go back to studying. I dedicate two to three days per week to my academic work and four full days to looking after my son. Two days per week he is at the nursery. When people tell you that as soon as a child starts the nursery, they pick up everything going, they tell the truth. And so the first months of my studies have been quite intimidating and draining… it’s been a physical as much as a mental trial…

First, what I didn’t expect was that my child’s string of colds would last for as long as five months. You just don’t predict that you will often spend your nights in a sitting position with a coughing child clinging to your chest… that you won’t often sleep at night because you’ll be checking on them, changing clothes and sheets wet with sweat and saliva, measuring doses of medicine that will often end up on the bed or on the floor because your hands are just too shaky at five in the morning to do it right. What you are not mentally prepared for is that you’ll often get flu and colds yourself and you’ll won’t be able to shake them off for weeks because your body is shattered and cannot be bothered to fight. What you don’t hope for is that when things are just looking bright your husband will all of a sudden come back earlier from work with a pale and sad looking child and that as soon as you take the little one to cuddle him … you’ll understand why they look so miserable… because before you know it you’ll be standing there in a warm and slimy puddle of vomit… wearing a handful of it and holding a share of in your hand too. What people don’t tell you about are the visits to hospital when the child’s temperature turns dangerously high, they don’t tell you about the hours that you’ll spend there feeling frightened and inadequate… because your child is sick (again) and you haven’t figured out how to make mothering work properly yet.

It was a phase. A hard, trying and tiresome phase. And it passed, I hope… but it would have been much easier if some things did not happen, if words did not happen, wretched words that sadly come from directions that you least expect. Careless criticisms of your choices. Doesn’t matter what that choice is? Just a different and independent choice. That you study. That you don’t study. That you work part-time. That you work full-time. That you don’t work. That you cook, that you don’t cook. That you buy, that you don’t buy. That you look after yourself, that you don’t look after yourself. That you stand straight and that you don’t squat. And all this happens precisely at the time when you need support and encouragement most and it feels so unfair and so ridiculous. It feels stupid and uncaring.

And I wonder now… have I done it myself? Have I made a comment to any of my friend-mums that made them feel uncomfortable? Have I been too blind to see that they needed support and a listening ear? Have I tried to understand their values and their choices? Did I give them a good word? Was I a sister?

I’ve never given up a dream of women gathering to chat and cook together. I know that it’s difficult because we are busy and our routines and schedules are different. But I think having a cup of tea together is still possible and still needed because motherhood is hard work and our experiences, the good and the bad, should be shared, appreciated and understood. I think it takes as much as a barrel of tea drunk together to learn about and to understand another mother’s circumstances, problems and capabilities… This tea and a good word is often what it takes to show support… nothing else…

I’ll have my kettle ready for the next visit.