Shorn

Photo Credit © Maja Jancekova

To observers it must be laughingly obvious that last year was the ideal moment, from one perspective, to leave a career and concentrate on obligations at home. I made a great decision. The kids went into partial or full-time schooling in the spring of school year 2019-2020, were again at home due to COVID-19 in the following winter, and then spent several months more in part-time home-schooling this spring. Now, my son is once again thrust into part-time schooling at home. It is such a wonderful thing that I can devote myself to their schooling like this. My kids are lucky.

I chose the wrong time from another perspective, my own, to leave my career. Starting a small art business requires time and dedication. I could already only work part-time on it for a number of reasons, and because of home schooling my available working hours shrank even further. To make a long story short, because people refuse to vaccinate, the full burden of their education falls to me a couple of days a week. My available energy has shrunk even more, because homeschooling is taxing. 

Both of my kids have attention issues, and doing any homework, never mind homeschooling, was always a total struggle. I am yelled at, hit, objects are thrown, I am whined at endlessly, it's exhausting, with little reward, and after years of my own health suffering I walked away in 2020, as I said, from the effort of trying to satisfy the twin demands of career and mothering. I chose a tough course that is humbling, that has involved a punishing drop in prestige and wealth, but that was healthier for everyone. The big bonus is that I love working on comics.

So homeschooling was never going to be easy, but for whatever reason, my children's school has been incapable - unlike most other industries - of getting on top of distance learning. We are in the third Corona school year, and still they cannot do more than send a couple of worksheets home per school day. It is the most difficult of things to motivate children like mine to do busywork like writing out worksheets. The lack of video teaching, group work and interactive activities is destroying their education. Filling in the gaps is impossible at home, when the children are totally resistant. I hear stories of other families, where the kids are engaged via Zoom with their teachers and classes most or all day, but it is better for my mental health not to think about it. It is too frustrating and I refuse to become bitter. 

In September and October I had finally managed to find a rhythm where I reliably painted between 5 and 8 pages of my book a week. Last week I managed three. I am so exhausted from pushing children to do schoolwork and homework that, after the weekend, it is Monday and they are at school today and tomorrow - and I just need to rest.

I started this blog entry about how lucky it is that I can educate my kids, or at least try to do so, because it is not lost on me that there are millions of other families in the far-worse situation where they cannot even dream of filling in the gaps created by this pandemic, never mind working on a financially stupid effort like a graphic novel. 

Counting my blessings always helps me feel marginally better, but it does not finish books.

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In good news, I got a haircut after two years of butchering my head myself and which I paid for by baking a carrot cake. It turns out that the "amateur hairstylist" I found via Facebook is a talented scissors-wielder AND photog. She took this photo of me, and if I ever get a book deal, I will find a way to pay her for this an an author photo. Her Instagram is _ellenoir_ and if your desire today is to bask in rich, soothing, warm orange and rust coloured glory, click over.