The Next Big Thing Experiment

I’m going to create a food recipe blog. It’ll have gorgeous photos of mouth-watering desserts and dinners. I’ll make eye-catching graphics. You’ll be able to download my attractive and easy-to-follow recipe cards. But wait, I don’t especially like cooking. What if I get fed up baking cakes and whipping up easy and economical meals?

A book blog? I’ve always got a book on the go. I could recommend the books I enjoy. There’s only one problem: I’m not very good at writing reviews.

I know. I’ll have a handicrafts blog. I’ll crochet cute bags, stripy socks, and blankets that everyone will wow over and want to copy.

Or I could embroider stunning red stitch pictures of angels and quirky people in pretty gardens and tea-dye them before framing them.

How about salt dough? I know how to create ornaments using only salt, water and oil. I’d stain them with coffee and varnish them so they’d last a long time.

I’m excited for a few minutes, turning possibilities over in my mind. But then I remember I don’t have much patience. What if I never complete any of my craft projects? I won’t have many posts on my blog.

“Document your life,” I tell myself. “You can tell stories and take photos.” But I have hardly any family left at home. My days are full of me and dogs and not much else. Who’d be interested in hearing about my copy and paste ordinary days? I want to do something inspiring or helpful. I don’t just want to fill in some online space.

I run out of ideas, and conclude with a sinking heart that maybe I should stick to doing what I know best: writing and speaking about unschooling. I head back to my unschooling blog and scroll through a few pages. Yes, I love all my stories. But no, I don’t want to write more of them now that my kids have all grown up. I need new adventures.

One day, I hear someone talking about their Little Book of Experiments. Then I stumble across Anne-Lauren Le Cunff’s book, Tiny Experiments. Experiments? A delicious feeling flutters through me. I might enjoy doing some little experiments. I could chase my curiosity, try new and wondrous things, and see where they lead instead of standing still, thinking so hard that my head aches, waiting for answers about where to head next. Who knows? One of my little experiments might turn me in the right direction. At the very least, I will have fun.

I could try a new kind of exercise, visit a different cafe, watch a Korean movie, draw something simple each day, use a prompt to write a story, read a new novel genre, start a Life List of birds I see locally, listen to a new podcast, or compose a poem.

And I could buy a copy of Tiny Experiments. Is it the kind of book that will help me find my next big thing? I don’t know. I will need to do a tiny experiment to find out: I will read the book.

Suddenly, I realise that doing little experiments is very similar to unschool strewing. Now I’m curious: will I find lots of unschooling ideas between the covers of Tiny Experiments? Perhaps I won’t be leaving unschooling behind. Maybe it plans to follow me all through my life. Now that’s an interesting thought.

Image

Is this great egret searching for something, too?

David Clode, Unsplash

So, do you do little experiments? What new things have you tried recently?