A Snapshot of a day in the life of DL

This is a glimpse into the life of a DL (Distributed Learning) student.

I work all day…not quite sure where the work day itself actually went, but then sometimes time flying is a blessing. I head home after work is wrapped up for the day and find my wife and kids out side. My 3 year old daughter is running circles around in typical 3 year old girl mode. My wife is wearing my baseball glove playing catch with my 5 year old son, who incidentally is obsessed with all things sport (Lord help me).

I get out of the truck and walk into the front yard only to hear “Mom, give the glove to Dad, I’m gonna play catch with him now.” YES!!!! I am the preferred parent when it comes to catch. I have a momentary flash to the end of Field of Dreams. “Hey Dad…wanna have a catch?” I guess that’s fitting after all. I can truthfully answer the question “Is this Heaven?” with the reply “No…it’s Iowa.”

But I digress.

After a short game of catch we head inside for a quick bite of supper before my youth and family ministry coordinator wife heads out for church night. I hang with the kiddies for a few minutes…aka I give them their nightly baths…and then take them down the street to my in-laws (yes, my in-laws live 6 houses away on the same street), and then I too head out to church for the evening.

I spend the next two hours preparing for and then teaching a group of 6-8^th graders in confirmation, which incidentally is a much better crowd than I had 2 weeks ago when a whopping zero people showed up. I wrap that up, head back to the in-laws to pick up the midgets, and then head home and put them to bed.

I fire up the computer…I facebook...yes facebook is still open on my computer, I’m addicted, leave me alone…I open up Luthernet, log in and check to see if there are any new group postings in either of my two classes…there isn’t…so I log into the weekly assignment page and take a quick inventory of where I’m at for the week. There are two things that both need to be done. One is start a reading assignment of roughly 40 pages, the other is to load/watch a video lecture…for the sake of time, I start loading the lecture.

For your reference, in the time it’s taken me to write this much, I’ve loaded half of the video. This could take awhile.

Then I look at the book, then I look back at the computer…I switch back to facebook, nothing new there in the past few minutes. I look at the book and read the first 2 pages and remember that I need to start a load of laundry…good distraction. I get that done and fold the load that had been sitting in the dryer since last night and then look at the computer again. Then at the book again.

It occurs to me that I haven’t logged onto this site for awhile and I figure I should (hence the posting you are reading now).

At this point…my glimps/recap of the day has caught up with the point in time where I am right now. Have you seen the movie Spaceballs? There’s a part where they actually get the movie Spaceballs (yes, in the movie itself) and fast forward to the part where they are. They are looking at a monitor of themselves watching that exact moment in time…from the camera’s viewpoint.

“what am I looking at?”
“Now”
“What”
“You’re looking at now now. What’s happens in the movie now, happens now.”

I was reminded of that moment by what I just wrote. Yes I express myself in movie. Yes, I realize this is sad. My video is still loading very slowly. Ugg.

I write this to give you perspective of how we often begin “class” for the day. Tired out, having difficulty focusing and so we procrastinate until our inner motivation speaker (Chris Farley’s “livin in a van down by the river guy”) kicks in and we knuckle down and get to work. I really need to start working for the night. But someone just clicked at me on facebook. Procrastination calls.