Archive of posts from January 2024
-
What Unschooling Kids Might Be Missing Out
I have only seen two kinds of responses when someone learns that we are unschooling our daughter. Either they are worried about education or they are worried about social skills. The former manifests into questions such as “how will she manage life without knowing math and science”, or “how will she get a job or go for higher education without a certification” etc. I understand their anxiety in this matter and sometimes even I wonder how we can be so chill about it. The fact of the matter is that I know she can’t get a high paying job, But if she can understand that living happily on a small income is better than seeking peer praise and recognition for a lot of money and living in stress, then my job is done. Or at least that is what I have come to realize after all these years on the planet.
...continue reading -
Year In Review 2023
I know I am a little bit late for the “year in review” series but I was busy publishing other posts that were in backlog. Finally I got some time to reflect back on the year that has gone by. Every year at the beginning of a new year, I look back at the previous year and pen down some of the highlights and interesting events that transpired. So here goes. Last year was better than 2022 both in terms of finance and personal life. While a new war has started, it has now become a common place for wars to start and then people forgetting about it. Anyway, COVID-19 and the dark shadow it has cast on us is finally really over, although there are still some cases here and there. But those are all global events. Lets talk about what happened in my personal life.
...continue reading -
Dark Theme In Jekyll
Did you notice anything different about the blog? Well, I introduced a dark theme. Can you find how to change the theme by just looking at my blog? No? If you’d like to switch the theme to dark or light mode, read the last section of this post. Now, some of you may know that I migrated my blog from WordPress to Jekyll. Jekyll for those of you who don’t know, is a tool that transforms markdown text into static websites and blogs. If you are left wondering what all that mumbo jumbo was about, then it will perhaps serve you better to skip this post :). For some time now, I have been wanting to add a dark mode for my blog. But it never came up high enough in priority to give it my attention. That changed with the new year. I decided to add dark theme to my blog in 2024.
...continue reading -
The Markets Of 2023
The year 2023 is behind us, and this year was definitely less eventful than the past 3 years. Since COVID hit, things have changed quite a bit. It all started with the virus of course that wreaked havoc all over the world at the same time. There were a lot of side effects. Many lost loved ones, we were restricted to home isolation and lock downs were introduced. For the first time ever, we had everything closed including schools. Only the emergency services were running. The new work from home culture started. Then came pumping money in the fear and anticipation of reduced spending. The free flow of money caused inflation because people now had more money but nowhere to spend. Remember, everything was closed, so you could spend on nothing but food and health. Then came interest rate hikes to control the inflation. What a crazy ride.
...continue reading -
Our First Step Towards True Retirement - Part 2
Happy new year everyone! I want to continue where I left off in my previous post, so if you haven’t read that, I suggest you head over there first to get some context. The year was 2022, and like I mentioned in the previous post, we were thinking about farm life and were not sure if we can adapt to it after living in the city for such a long time. Since a few of our unschooling friends were living on farms far away from the city we thought it would be a good idea to visit their farm and see how they live and take care of their daily activities in such remote places. It will help us answer some long standing questions.
...continue reading