“I Don’t Want to Go to School!”

“I don’t want to go to school tomorrow” my daughter said yesterday evening. Not so unusual words from a 13 year old kid. In fact not so unusual words from any kid on a Sunday night when “the blues” kick in. The Sunday night blues, that kind of sickish, crappy, depressed feeling you get when you know you have to start a new week, especially after a fun weekend. She spent Saturday with a close friend at a local women’s college basketball game. That same friend spent the night at our place and we took them with my son and I to a sledding event we hold every year with the cub scouts. Yes, no doubt a fun weekend and one that makes a Monday morning school day look, by far, less than appealing.

I also used to get the Sunday night blues occasionally as a kid… and lately I’ve been getting them again all too frequently. I keep wondering “don’t us responsible adults eventually grow out of that?”  I know it’s a function of not being terribly satisfied with work right now and realizing too that I have let pass some of the creative pursuits (music, art, writing, etc.) that showed their directional signs to me on the roads that I have traveled to get me to where I am now.  I was a cellist all through grade school.  I gave it up when I went away to college because I couldn’t find the drive to take it to the next level.  I used to sketch often but have not drawn anything in over two decades.  Of course, I love to write, which is what got me here to this blogging site.  The list goes on and on…

I’ve tried not to lose complete site of that part of me, but the day to day often gets in the way and free time is at a premium.  I envy the people that have been able to build that creativity into their working life… you know that part of your life that fills up MOST of your days!  Not that I necessarily could have made a lucrative career out of any of these activities, they call them “starving artists” for a reason!  But in hindsight, who knows?  There are so many decisions that we all make each and every day that alter the path that we will follow the next day.  More and more I find myself CRAVING the “creative life” and finding it harder and harder to compartmentalize the time spent each day working vs. “creating” vs. spending some quality time with my family, my anchors as they say. I guess I want it ALL, lumped conveniently into one nice package.

Lately I’ve tried to instill this thought process into my kid’s heads.  For sure, we have some time before we send them off to college and they begin planning out the rest of their lives!  But I want it be be crystal clear to them that the world really is their canvas, that they should never settle on the easy path and certainly never give up on their dreams!  Yeah, probably a little heavy for a couple of kids that aren’t thinking about much other than school and sports and video games… and in my daughter’s case… maybe boys (uugh!).  But I guess I feel, in their case, it’s never too EARLY to start… and maybe, just maybe, in my case, with the support of my wonderful family behind me… it’s never too LATE to start over!