I am grateful for Online Learning

I am grateful for online learning.

It’s been a rough morning, though. My daughter is doing remote school and her class is huge. There is 1 teacher for 25 2nd graders. She’s doing her best but sometimes technology fails everyone, no matter how good your set up or intentions are.

Milly broke down in tears at one point today because she got onto a meeting 30 seconds late. Then later she screamed, “I hate school” and “I wish I didn’t have to do my work — I just want to go outside”. She loves school when it’s at her actual school.

Remote learning sucks when you’re an extroverted 7 year old.

Still, I am grateful for online learning because it’s giving us the gift of being in a place we love.

Instead of staying in the hot, humid, oppressive souther state where we live, we decided to travel north.

We have a tiny cabin on a lake in Michigan.

Outside my window, there’s a huge pine tree and beyond that, the lake.

It’s cool here and calm. Mostly quiet except for someone cutting down trees further down on our property so we can build a barn.

I am staring out the window, wanting to be out there in the sunshine and feeling the breeze.

If it wasn’t for remote learning, we wouldn’t be here.

We’d be back in the muggy heat of the Florida panhandle.

Ever since the first time Nathan brought me here, I could feel it.

HOME.

If we could live here 6 months out of the year, I’d be all in.

Someday we will.

Winter is tricky, but I like a challenge.

And it’s because so much is online now, that someday we will.

I didn’t always love technology.

When I was in college studying photography, I resented that I had to take a digital photography course. In fact, I argued my way out of the remaining credits when I was a junior.

I told my advisor I’d never need it or use it.

Sigh….I was such a purist then.

It took me years to get on board with online yoga.

I thought it would be impersonal and cold. Online yoga felt like something that people did if they were lazy or couldn’t get work at an actual yoga studio. I assumed that teaching yoga online meant the teacher wasn’t very good and that even further, you couldn’t possibly teach yoga or movement skillfully through a screen.

Now this is my entire business model.

And truthfully, I love it.

I can actually teach my yoga classes from anywhere. No traffic or parking drama to worry about. I don’t need a babysitter to watch my kids — I can plop them in front of the TV for 30-45 minutes while I teach. And yes, letting them watch TV while I teach yoga does not bother me even the tiniest bit,

I can teach people all over the world through the internet and I do.

And even though so much more is moving online now, that doesn’t mean we lose our personal connections.

I believe that I’ve actually strengthened my community and grown deeper friendships in the past few years through connecting online.

So while I am still committed to living and experiencing as much of the world offline as I can, I am grateful for online learning in all of its forms.

And now, nature is calling me, so I need to sign off.