Krakovianka is an American Christian living in Krakow, Poland. She’s also a homeschooler, and she’s been invited to peak to a small group of pioneering new Polish homeschooling parents. Go over and encourage her.
Sarah at Reading the Past on The 50-Page Rule. Before last year, I almost always finished any book I started, hoping that it would get better. I have, in the past couple of years, given myself permission to give up on a book that I’m not enjoying. However, I just finished a wonderful book, Kristen Lavransdatter: The Bridal Wreath (actually part 1 of a three part novel), and I couldn’t get interested or get used to the style until I was about a third of the way through this first part. I stuck with it because a good friend highly recommended the book. So, sometimes you should give up, and sometimes you need to keep trying, and who can tell the difference?
Tonia at Intent has a challenge: 30 Days of Nothing. The idea is refrain as a family from buying any non-essential things for an entire month. I honestly don’t think I could talk my family into restricting our buying to only essentials for a month. And I’m not sure how to define “essentials”? The things that Tonia mentions– lattes, movies, books, clothes, fancy hair gel– are already fairly scarce in our family, not that we don’t have our luxuries. (We get most of the books from the library and from the used bookstore.) We buy fast food or pizza occasionally. We spend a great deal of money on classes: dance, karate, outside academic classes for the high schoolers, college classes. I don’t see how we could quit these for a month, but it might be that we ought to consider cutting down on the outside classes in the long term. Nonetheless, I’m intrigued by the idea of a month long fast from materialism. What do you think?
I think it sounds like a great idea and can’t wait to float it by my husband!
On the 50-page rule – mine is similar. It’s the 3-chapter rule. I tell all my children that if they can’t get into a story by the end of the third chapter, they have my permission to set the book aside (after informing me) and moving to a different book. When I was young I would make myself finish any book I started and I read a lot of stuff I hated. I also got into the habit of putting my brain on hold while reading, so I couldn’t for the life of me remember the story-line of a book I forced myself to read. The only upside to that was that when I got around later in life to “rereading” books I’d made myself read when I was younger, it really was like reading them for the first time and I loved them. (Two immediately come to mind that I “read” when I was 10, and “re-read” when I was 40: Kim and Oliver Twist – what great books!)
This challenge is a lesson in humility for me! 🙂 I am discovering that I have *way* too much fluff in my life…and the realization just hit me that I am going to have to cancel my beloved haircut for next month…but I suspect many of us have our hidden areas: scrapbooking or hobby supplies, running out to buy something we could just as easily borrow, that sort of thing.
It’s been very interesting to see how each family interprets the challenge and deals with their own issues of waste and/or materialism.
Thanks for mulling it over with me!