My new love
I feel like I'm falling in love again. Really, I feel all excited and giddy and full of excitement about the future, like I did when Nephi and I were first falling in love. Of course, I still love Nephi, even more now than then, but this is sort of different.
I've been feeling a little crazy lately, sort of bored and restless. It's funny because being a stay-at-home mom, until recently, left me perfectly happy. But suddenly I felt just AHHH sometimes, like between the meaningful interactions with my boys (who I love dearly) I was just frittering away so much of everything - time and energy in particular. Anyway, this got me to thinking a lot about the structure of my life, how I spend my time, et cetera. I talked with Nephi, who is the greatest husband, about ways we could do things a little different. We figured out ways that sometimes he could be home more during the days and work more in the evenings, and the prospect of just having some time like that, even a few hours, that I could count on and actually direct towards something just felt like such a breath of new life to me. But what to do?
So last week my Mom came to spend some time with the boys (thanks, Mom!) and I took a beach chair and some food, my journal and patriarchal blessing and some paper and spent some time at the beach just thinking and brainstorming and reflecting. I made lots of lists - maybe I'll post some that might be interesting - things I genuinely like to do, unique talents I have, qualities of a perfect way to spend the time, and then just a list of anything that popped into my mind of what to do. It was way down the list, something I hadn't really even thought of until that moment, and didn't even stand out at first. But as I sat there thinking, mulling over my lists, it just emerged, bigger and more exciting and more and more right, this new love of mine.
Urban planning. Is that what you expected? Me neither. But I feel suddenly so passionate about it. It wraps up so many things I genuinely care about into one package: Building diverse communities. Getting out of cars. Devaluing consuption and valuing relationships and beauty. Dependence on oil and the nightmarish foreign policy it engenders. Living sustainably.
Really, it boils down to this. In a year or so, my family will be moving somewhere new, and I have this fear (this is so like me, to be worrying about this over a year before we even have a clue of where we'll be) that we're going to be choosing between some awful, soulless suburb a 45 minute congested drive from Nephi's work and a drive from shopping and the library and the school (but it will be a great school with invested parents and good test scores) where we'll be assistant program passer-outers in our church ward teeming with strong young families with lots of terrific kids, or a neighborhood closer to his work that is more interesting and historic and walkable and closer to downtown and right on a bus line, but sort of unsafe, and in a fairly miserable school district, where I'll be Relief Society president and Nephi the bishop two weeks after we move in and there will be five kids in the whole primary. It just seems so wrong to have those be the only options.
Critics of urban planning say that people want sprawl, as evidenced by so many people's decision to move out to the suburbs. But it is not true; they are not offered viable alternatives. I know there is a way that things can be different. I want cities to grow in ways that offer real choices for families to be able to raise children not in the suburbs.
So I'm ready to be an activist, I'm that excited right now. Really, the only civic meeting I've attended was to voice my opposition to a grocery store rebuilding a few blocks from our home in Salt Lake in a way that would start destroying the neighborhood. I still feel sad when I think of that store sitting in the Sugarhouse business district. I care about that neighborhood. If people don't fight to save it, it won't last another ten years; that much became clear in my brief time on the community council.
So I have lots of ideas of things I want to learn about planning. I'm hopefully going to take a few classes at community colleges here over the next year, and I'm going to be reading lots of books on my own. MIT has a huge urban studies and planning program, and they put lots of courses online for free (in all subjects - it's pretty awesome), so I'll probably use a lot of those course readings to guide me. Anyway, I've set up a new blog here where I'll reflect on what I read and see and sort through thoughts I have. It will be pretty basic for awhile. It might not be especially interesting reading, but feel free to stop by from time to time. I think I'll post this there also, as the introduction.
I've been feeling a little crazy lately, sort of bored and restless. It's funny because being a stay-at-home mom, until recently, left me perfectly happy. But suddenly I felt just AHHH sometimes, like between the meaningful interactions with my boys (who I love dearly) I was just frittering away so much of everything - time and energy in particular. Anyway, this got me to thinking a lot about the structure of my life, how I spend my time, et cetera. I talked with Nephi, who is the greatest husband, about ways we could do things a little different. We figured out ways that sometimes he could be home more during the days and work more in the evenings, and the prospect of just having some time like that, even a few hours, that I could count on and actually direct towards something just felt like such a breath of new life to me. But what to do?
So last week my Mom came to spend some time with the boys (thanks, Mom!) and I took a beach chair and some food, my journal and patriarchal blessing and some paper and spent some time at the beach just thinking and brainstorming and reflecting. I made lots of lists - maybe I'll post some that might be interesting - things I genuinely like to do, unique talents I have, qualities of a perfect way to spend the time, and then just a list of anything that popped into my mind of what to do. It was way down the list, something I hadn't really even thought of until that moment, and didn't even stand out at first. But as I sat there thinking, mulling over my lists, it just emerged, bigger and more exciting and more and more right, this new love of mine.
Urban planning. Is that what you expected? Me neither. But I feel suddenly so passionate about it. It wraps up so many things I genuinely care about into one package: Building diverse communities. Getting out of cars. Devaluing consuption and valuing relationships and beauty. Dependence on oil and the nightmarish foreign policy it engenders. Living sustainably.
Really, it boils down to this. In a year or so, my family will be moving somewhere new, and I have this fear (this is so like me, to be worrying about this over a year before we even have a clue of where we'll be) that we're going to be choosing between some awful, soulless suburb a 45 minute congested drive from Nephi's work and a drive from shopping and the library and the school (but it will be a great school with invested parents and good test scores) where we'll be assistant program passer-outers in our church ward teeming with strong young families with lots of terrific kids, or a neighborhood closer to his work that is more interesting and historic and walkable and closer to downtown and right on a bus line, but sort of unsafe, and in a fairly miserable school district, where I'll be Relief Society president and Nephi the bishop two weeks after we move in and there will be five kids in the whole primary. It just seems so wrong to have those be the only options.
Critics of urban planning say that people want sprawl, as evidenced by so many people's decision to move out to the suburbs. But it is not true; they are not offered viable alternatives. I know there is a way that things can be different. I want cities to grow in ways that offer real choices for families to be able to raise children not in the suburbs.
So I'm ready to be an activist, I'm that excited right now. Really, the only civic meeting I've attended was to voice my opposition to a grocery store rebuilding a few blocks from our home in Salt Lake in a way that would start destroying the neighborhood. I still feel sad when I think of that store sitting in the Sugarhouse business district. I care about that neighborhood. If people don't fight to save it, it won't last another ten years; that much became clear in my brief time on the community council.
So I have lots of ideas of things I want to learn about planning. I'm hopefully going to take a few classes at community colleges here over the next year, and I'm going to be reading lots of books on my own. MIT has a huge urban studies and planning program, and they put lots of courses online for free (in all subjects - it's pretty awesome), so I'll probably use a lot of those course readings to guide me. Anyway, I've set up a new blog here where I'll reflect on what I read and see and sort through thoughts I have. It will be pretty basic for awhile. It might not be especially interesting reading, but feel free to stop by from time to time. I think I'll post this there also, as the introduction.
posted by Gina at 10:28 PM
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