Friday Freewrite: Make a wish!

"Today’s a day for wishes. Write about a wish you dearly hope will come true in your life."

This was a tough exercise. It was easy to talk about history or thunderstorms and the like, but wishes are something else entirely. I grew up making wishes. Nothing happened. Then I learned something else: plans based on wishes fail. So I make goals and plan for the goal. Sometimes my goals seem unrealistic, but that just means I have to work harder to attain them.

Learning is like this. I wanted to learn about architecture, reading online and in books was not getting me the education I felt I needed so I went to Graduate school and worked with professors, professionals, and others to learn the technologies of the trade. It's an industry that changes quickly so I have to keep up with my reading to stay current in the field. Right now, I am a stay-at-home-mom (or work at home, with online classes) and I don't really get to use my education in architecture. I'm not even really sure I will re-enter the field professionally. That doesn't matter to me. I love learning about it and helping others, discussing technologies, and educating those who are steadfast and old fashioned about the trade about new things they may not have considered. I can talk for days on end about old houses.

Now wait, this does relate to the freewrite! My wish is that my daughter will someday get to be as passionate about something as I am about old houses. That she will find joy in a subject and find work in the field that makes her happy to get up in the morning and go to work, that she has so much fun that it won't be work for her and that she will never be bored. I can read for hours about the history of indoor plumbing (ie African aqueducts that pre-date the Roman ones) and retain the information because I genuinely find it interesting. I wish that she finds that too.

I can't really make that a goal that I can plan for, but I can facilitate her learning in a way that doesn't make her hate education. I can watch for things that interest her and put opportunities in front of her for her to choose. Right now she is watching a DVD on zoo management. She picked it out at the library and she was thrilled when we got home that I said she could watch it right away. I hate seeing her glued to the TV, but she is enthralled. We visted a vet's office today and she asked them when she would be old enough to help with giving animals shots. They told her at "seven years old" she can help hold and comfort the animals. They told her she has to weigh as much as the animal to be able to help. She told me she wants to be an animal doctor when she is seven. Cute. She's been looking through out Hobby Farm magazines too. Who knows? Maybe next year she'll want to be a firetruck, but right now she wants to know about animals so that's what we are using to teach her. A is for alligator.