resignings

I resigned from my job yesterday... and I'm feeling very lighthearted. From June 2008 I'll be 40K a year worse off and 100% free to pursue a wide range of things I want to do...

very odd but on the same day I made my first sale to a publisher for one of my photos. A small step (and not a brilliant sale in terms of renumeration) but significant in many ways. I'm taking it as a sign of very good karma about this big decision....

even more interesting is that it is one of my photos that I really like and hadn't even thought about selling. it's from my trip to china a few years ago and is a wall painting in a daoist temple of the eight immortals - so also significant content in relation to losing some of the more material aspects of my existence... and it's for a book about world religions so I'll get a free copy to add to my collection on spirituality, religion and philosophy. Here is the photo and the quote that went with it on flickr...



If you do not change direction, you may end up where you are heading.
Lao Tze

Tim thinks I'm barmy of course seeing significance in the coincidences but I'm enjoying them alot...

so the first steps are taken - the fool on her new journey....

preparings

We're off 'doon the water' as they say in Glasgow.

We've had an offer accepted on a house in Dunoon, which is in Argyll and Bute on the West coast of Scotland.

We are all fairly excited but it isn't planned to happen until the end of May.

This allows enough time to sell our fab flat in Glasgow and for me to work out my notice.

So the home education plan moves on... I will contact the Argyll and Bute council to discuss the possibilities offered by the local grammar school but it does have over 1000 pupils and I personally cannot imagine that this would be OK for Laurie.

There is some debate about the optimum size for a school community to thrive and I'll try to find some and point to it later. However this is largely academic to us as most of that research would not take into account the need for schools to support children with autism by generally minimising the amount of sensory overload they might encounter. It seems logical that the more students there are the more noise, distractions, potential for hidden bullying and chaos there are.

Well we'll see when I talk to them. For now I need to concentrate on working my notice, selling the flat and organising the move.

Worst bit of course is all the damn cleaning in preparation for people to come and look around. That and pretending that we don't have two large smelly dogs...

new beginnings

frozen in time

It feels like we are coming out of hibernation...

So much has happened that I don't have time to do write it all down, but I think we're coming back to the blogging and soon to the home education...

laurie is due to start secondary school this year and it has focussed our thoughts for a long time. I have spent hours looking for a school small enough to replicate his current small primary school in Govan. Shame we can't replicate the head teacher and her staff because he is still doing fantastically well at that school.

We are just not prepared to set him up to fail in a large secondary school where people have no concept of him and his needs. The fact that he is so high functioning means that people just do not see how differently his brain does work. He has also got much better at masking things (like when he doesn't understand the instructions, etc.) He just works it out himself eventually and quietly and then completes the task. He is desperate to start learning 'real' things. He wants academic challenge.

So I am going to do this with him. We will be interpreting the term home education broadly to encompass a wide range of activities, both academic and practical. We will be doing solitary and social learning and sometimes it will be well structured (because he likes that) and other times we'll let our hair down a bit. Our home education won't just be happening in the home but it may include rearing chickens and growing some of our own food.

I can't wait....

We contemplated us both giving up our jobs and moving to Orkney (yes a bit drastic but very nearly happened last September but didn't work out). The plan is now for me to finish work in time to start the secondary education phase while Tim stays in his job. We'll sell the grand flat in Glasgow and downsize. We 're planning to move to the country (maybe in Argyll & Bute)...

I am going to try to make some money with a bit of elearning consultancy and my photography. I've been working on a new website and not had any time for flickr or the blogging. Maybe I can start to catch up again with my non work life!

the new photography website...