Coddiwomple

In Get 'er done... from The Healthy Knitter, Christina shares,

“Coddiwomple is an English slang term and means to travel/journey with purpose to a vague destination.”

This is the way my husband likes to travel but I’m more of a planner. We have finally worked out a compromise where we both kind of get what we want when going on a trip. I make a tentative itinerary with evening stops for lodging and our main destination. After I work out all those details, he comes in a derails it all…I mean adjusts it all.

I ended up with a two week trip that now is a four week trip.

Even though I get irritated at times, it always ends up working out and we always have fun.

I guess the main thing is that we are on this trip together.

My biggest problem or problems is that I’ve been asking him for 3 months to work on this trip and he waits until 4 days before we are going to leave to work on it. When I need this time to pack and plan (because I thought I had 2 more weeks to do this and now only have 3 days!), he wants to discuss and plan some more.

But this too shall pass.

We could end up arguing and both of us being miserable. We could just cancel the trip and then no one “wins.” We could not compromise and then one of us will get want we want but the other one hates it all.

But life is full of compromises and being flexible brings happiness. I need to see that just because my plan changes, it doesn’t mean that it won’t be even better than I had hoped. In fact, it might even be better.

I wonder if that is how my students sometimes feel in the classroom. Their vague destination is to make it to graduation along with their friends. They have no idea how they will get there or what it all will entail.

Then teachers, administrators, regulations, requirements all join in and start muddying the waters. Some road blocks, detours, or bumpy roads impede the journey but the students keep moving forward.

I think it is important for students to realize that this is actually the way life really works. We all have the purpose of reaching old age and we can’t make a definite plan on how to get there because life throws all sorts of things at us. This keeps us from following a straight line path to our goals.

I need to help my students realize this happens and help them learn how to cope with the curves that life throws us. I need to help them learn that it is important to be flexible and even though we may get irritated, we shouldn’t let things throw us off course.

So, hopefully our trip will be memorable and fun! I will let you know when we get back and I will share our travel notes in a future post.