Reviews of Deschooling Gently: A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling

(Edit: Deschooling Gently: A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling is now available on Amazon and Barnes and Noble!)

Summerm had an advance review copy of Deschooling Gently. She wrote a review of it on her blog. Here’s a snippet:

In Deschooling Gently you explore the many important topics that frequently come up in homeschooling. From choosing the “right” curriculum, to goal planning, to just keeping track of it all. Plus how to find support and how to deal with the ever present doubters and haters. She shares a lot of great information plus lists useful websites and books for you to check out to learn more.

Head over to Summer’s blog to read the whole thing.

Sunshine Alternative Mama has a review as well. Here’s a snippet:

Tammy also shared other insights; in particular I loved that she talked about how much she loved to plan things out, and how life didn’t really seem to work that way, so she would make her plan and put it in her back pocket. She felt safe winging it knowing that the plan was there, just in case. I totally related to that. Another gem Tammy shared was that spending a lot of money on a curriculum has the potential to create an emotional/financial attachment to the curriculum, whether or not it is working for your family.

Go to her blog to read the rest of this review.

If you feel inspired, well, you know where to go

Do You Twitter?

Although it sounds like it might be a symptom of a horrible virus, Twitter is a IM-esque social networking protocol.

Are you on Twitter? If so, look me up, and I’ll follow you. I’m going to mess around with it, and see how useful it can be.

If you Twitter, or you don’t Twitter anymore, what is your impression of it? I’m trying to understand this new technology, and how others have used it in a way that it’s not yet another thing to have to pay attention to and waste time.

Deschooling Gently – Phase 1

I am so excited, I just have to share with you all!

A few minutes ago, I sent to my editor the first draft of the entire manuscript for Deschooling Gently: A Step by Step Guide to Fearless Homeschooling!

This is really going to happen. And it’s still slated to come out around March of next year. As soon as finalize the table of contents, and get some quotables, I’ll post them. But here’s a preview:

In Deschooling Gently, I talk about:

• Finding the path that works for you, according to your own family’s needs and personality
• Tools to avoid burnout
• How to create a learning environment where we aren’t co-dependent on school process, yet allows for the flexibility of using school tools if that is what works
• Changing our perspective from a place of being afraid of what might happen, to looking forward to the many possibilities of the future
• How to be “on the ball” without breaking our backs to get everything done
• Learning how to do “just enough” and recognizing when what we ask of ourselves is unrealistic and distracting from what is really important – our own definition of success

You can preorder now at my publisher’s website. I’m also going to have a launch party in near Los Angeles sometime in the first half of 2008. I hope to see many of you there! Thank you so much for supporting me while I go through this crazy process of becoming an author.

Procrastination Is a Great Tool

Procrastination is a great tool for getting things done.

I know that goes against conventional wisdom. But I’m finding that many many things that I had been ignoring are suddenly getting done now that I have this BIG THING looming over me. The Big Thing is a fun thing. It’s a happy thing. But it’s BIG. Lots of little things are getting done while thinking about the Big Thing.

So, the solution? Gotta break down the BIG THING into lots of small, attainable things.

I’ve participated in two NaNo competitions. Both times, I finished my book. The reason I was able to do it – I wasn’t looking at the big picture. I was looking at right now, today. Get 2000 wods written today. That’s all I want to do. Once that’s done, I can putz around the house.

Perhaps that’s what keeps anyone from being truly successful is the big ideas that make it seem impossible to move from where we are to the next moment. It’s so far from here to “the end” where everything comes together. But without those millions of very small gestures, that move us quietly from this moment to the next, we can never make it to the Big Thing that we’re working for.

Another interesting thing about the Big Thing, is the more concrete it is, the scarier it is. What if we don’t make it? What if we fail? But if the Big Thing is variable, and we are open to the possibilities of what the Big Thing might end up being, it seems less daunting. Just keep plugging along, until it happens.

That’s what I feel like I’ve been doing up to this point. Moving bit by bit without a specific plan for the Big Thing I’m headed for. But now I have one. And it’s tripping me up. I gotta get rid of this concrete idea of what is supposed to happen, and just move forward, somewhere, a little everyday. And if I keep doing the little bit that I can right now, and do the same thing tomorrow, and the next day – I’ll get somewhere. Where, I don’t know for sure. But somewhere good.

Getting freaked out about the future can be easy to do when it seems like we have only one possible end goal. That’s all in our head though. The one goal we think we have, is actually just one of many possible goals. We can head that way, but there might be something better along the way – perhaps even disguised as a distraction.

That said, back to work for me! Must keep moving. And where that takes me – who knows! But one thing I know for sure – I’m going to damn well enjoy the journey. Throw my arms in the air and say, “Whee!”