A friend commented recently, "I love Almost-May! Everything is next year!" The rest of us laughed and nodded. In the homeschool calendar, that's pretty much it. August is, "Oh. We should probably start soon." September and October are mostly just happy sounds backed by cool weather and fresh books. November is, "Mmm, let's regroup and see what we can finish by December." January is just long, followed by February, which is "Wow, we should have looked more seriously into boarding school." March is another hopeful regrouping, "No, we can do this. Surely by August we'll have ironed out whatever-this-is-that's-tripping-us-up-right-now." (We won't - it's February that tripped us up. It happens every year.) That's followed by April, when everyone takes a deep breath, shoulders down, charge ahead, "We can do this! We're almost done!" Then comes May...
Next year, we're going to use the learning journals more regularly.
Next year, we're going to rock this time management plan I just found in the back of the bookshelf.
Next year, I'm hiring out as much as possible.
Next year, I'm going to do it all in-house, back to basics.
Next year, we're just going to subsist on water and museum memberships. It'll be FUN!
Even when we know better, there's a cathartic, comforting aspect to Next Year. It gets us through to June, which is the pay-off, the re-calibration, the re-centering:
"Huh. This was actually a pretty fantastic year. Look at you go! You learned a lot... I should probably give us all a little more credit next February."
It's good to know the rhythms of your year, lean in, embrace them. Come May, you can indulge in all the changes you're going to make Next Year!
Be encouraged!
~ Dy
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