Karta in his favourite place. He is the best thing that I have done so far in my life, I love you son.
Tag: family
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being apart
I didn’t realise just how much I would miss my wife. She is away on an orientation course as part of her new job in the telecoms sector. She only went away yesterday, but already that feels odd to me. If I go away, the daft thing is that I don’t feel the separation anxiety as much.
So, it’s just Karta and me for the week. This is the last week of term for mainstream schools, and so Karta will be finishing up his latest round of homeschooling on Thursday. I hope to make plans to meet up with friends and get out into the woods for some needed exercise and fresh air.
As for me, well, I have plenty of chores to keep me busy, plus I am going to make time to sit at my desk and write posts for this blog every day. Today is, after all, the day when lockdown restrictions are eased a bit more. We are now allowed to meet outdoors in groups of up to six people from two different households. Outdoor sports venues are reopening, which includes the football club that I am involved with.
That’s all I have to say for now, stay tuned for a lot more going forward.
JP
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my new normal
For the first time in many months, I find myself alone at home; this is rare.
So, what did I do with this slice of freedom? I cleaned the house, listened to some music and watched a few YouTube videos. Is that constructive? I don’t know, but anyway, it has all lead me to sit down and spew forth some words of encouragement and reflection.
/more_cake_
/fifteen_
This one is 15 today. We had a morning shared with Wallabies and Giraffes, followed by fried chicken and Mexican food. Happy Birthday darling boy, I love you.
I’m sorry Adam Sandler, this is not your best work.
I just found out that my father died on Sunday. R.I.P. Alan.
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437: Cyclopark Skatepark
We managed to get out to a skatepark for Karta’s first post-lockdown session of the summer. We met up with one of Karta’s buddies and spent the afternoon at Cyclopark near Gravesend.
The park is easy to get to, cheap to enter and has a very chilled vibe. We will be going back next week!
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431: Woodland Folk
Karta and I took our first post-lockdown trip to the woods with our friends today. We both agree that we have missed our friends and our days out in nature. With the summer holidays just around the corner, we will be making plans to get together every week.
Qi Skills for 21st Century Living
We began homeschooling Karta in January of this year. We have developed a learning regime that works well for our son. Now, as he heads into adolescence, I have been looking into the life skills he will need to survive in the 21st century.
This morning, I came across the concept of Qi skills, a series of attributes that will benefit children of the 21st century. They are as follows.
- Me skills: self-awareness, self-control, focus and attention
- We skills: empathy, collaboration, active listening, communication, perspective taking = Emotional Intelligence
- Why skills: exploration, curiosity
- Will skills: drive, determination, perseverance
- Wiggle skills: physical and intellectual restlessness
- Wobble skills: agility, adaptability, ability to face, overcome and learn from failure
- What if skills (possibility skills): innovation, imagination, creativity, out-of-the-box thinking
In addition to these skills, we are teaching Karta how to do the laundry, cook a meal, shop for food, travel on public transport, wake up independently and how to pack a bag. He is learning how to order food at restaurants, manage money, plan an outing or a trip and, soon, how to care for another living being.
We will show Karta that he must have love, compassion, altruism, morality and justice in his heart as he moves through life. Most of these skills are not taught in school, so we are lucky to be in a position to prepare Karta for the beautiful life that is ahead of him.
So, Karta and I took a trip into Canterbury to visit the Comic Art Exhibition that is on at The Beaney.
Karta has been poorly since the middle of last week. It would seem he has picked up a flu bug. He made a small recovery by the weekend and managed to spend the day at the skatepark on Saturday. By Monday he went downhill again and has lost hearing in his left ear.
We are visiting the doctor’s surgery this afternoon for a check-up.
On Monday the 6th of January 2020, we sent a letter to Karta’s school asking them to remove him from the register.
We are now providing Karta with a full-time education at home. Our focus is on the three Rs, reading, writing and arithmetic.
Karta will also be allowed to follow his passion for videography and ecology. For the next six months, Karta will be going back to basics with KS2 and KS3 maths, English and science. He will also continue with KS3 Spanish.
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Education Otherwise
We are busy deciding on the possibility of homeschooling our son. If we decide to go down that road, I will be putting most of my projects on hold, and will only work on those when I have time.
Home education will take up a considerable amount of time but will give me plenty to write about.
That is all.
Privacy concerns and the right to a private life have long steered me towards a technology purge. I will start that purge in 2020.
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90: Time to Re-evaluate
2019 is fast approaching, and along with it a considerable amount of uncertainty. People I know are burying their heads in the sand and saying shit like “it will all sort itself out, I don’t know why you let it bother you”.
Well, fuck that. How can we sit by and watch the people that run our country, drive us into a brick wall at 100mph?
Anyway, the uncertainty is making me think again about my place in the world. So, 2019 has to be an excellent time to make some serious changes to the way I live my life.
First up, I am going to resurrect The Rennsport Report and start writing things that interest me, not what someone else tells me to do.
There’s a bunch of other things in the pipeline, but I will wait until the new year to start banging on about those.
Cheers.
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73: Cakes, Cults & Rally Cars
The time has come for me to make some considerable changes to the way I am living my life.
I have had too many fingers in too many pies for too many years now. I’m always trying to come up with a way to make a living, but I don’t seem to be able to get out of this rut.
I turn 50 this month, a half-century of floundering around with nothing to show for it. That said, I do have a beautiful wife and a fantastic son, and they are the most important people to me.
So, what am I to do? Well, I am not going back to using social media regularly, and I am not going to take on any extra projects that do not directly benefit my small family.
The list of projects that I am involved with is getting smaller, and now I have started to develop a bakery business idea with my wife; although that is going to take several months to come to fruition.
My motorsport writing career is also on indefinite hold; having spent hundreds of hours writing about race & rally cars, I have come to realise that I need a break from all of it, at least until the new year.
My other blog, Cult of Zoid, has been neglected for quite some time, mostly because of the motorsport writing. I am going to fix that and get back to writing at least one memoir or op-ed for CoZ once per month.
My intermittent fasting is going well, although I am still making small course corrections as I try to find the best times for me to be eating.
Over and out.
JP
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70: The Obesity Inversion
Obesity is the most significant health crisis facing most of the western world. And so it is in my house.
I have struggled with being overweight for most of my adult life, and now I can see a similar pattern emerging with my son.
Several weeks ago I decided to follow an elementary form of intermittent fasting. The rules are quite simple, eat whatever you like, but only within a small window during the day.
So, I stop eating at around 6 pm every day, and then fast until at least lunchtime the following day. That’s it.
My wife is doing the same and seems to be doing okay. My son, on the other hand, is piling on the pounds. I think that it is down to a lack of regular daily exercise, combined with consuming too many “treats”.
So, what am I to do? Well, the first thing is to increase the amount of exercise that Karta does each day. Now, instead of driving to the school gates to collect him, I park a couple of miles away and walk to the school; then, we walk back to the car together. It adds around 40 minutes to our day, but the benefits are twofold. I get in a solid 90 minutes of daily exercise, and Karta receives what he needs.
As far as his diet is concerned, I try to send him into school with a good packed lunch and plenty to drink. Once home, I limit him to one small snack, in the shape of a piece of fruit.
I try to give him his main meal if the day before 5 pm, then he is only allowed to drink water until his breakfast the following morning at 7 am.
I hope that we can begin to reverse the weight gain to a reasonable level, given that Karta is at the age when boys need to put on a few pounds, so we have to get it right.
Onwards and upwards.