Good ideas, bad ideas.

I never read homeschooling blogs, ever, except under two circumstances.

1. I am connected to the author, through real-life friendship or longtime virtual friendship.
2. I am actively searching for information, inspiration, ideas, or tips.

One reason I never read homeschooling blogs (except for that) is that there are too many success stories.  It's a sort of Conspiracy of Wholesome Family Learning.   (You know the names of some of the ringleaders.) 

Okay, it's not a conspiracy — probably — but likely a natural phenomenon. Everybody wants to post about their best ideas and their best days.   Which is fine when you're looking for ideas, but poisonous for daily consumption, because my real life looks pretty sorry next to other people's best projections of themselves.

The other reason is that there are too many good ideas.   More good ideas than any parent can possibly try, let alone establish in a homeschool.  I have to limit my exposure to other people's good ideas, because I don't want my imagination to be occupied with all the great curriculum and books and activities I'll never have time to do.  Schooling would become a long, long list of what I don't do instead of a short, focused list of what I do do.  I need my imagination to bring my real work to life.

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All this is a confession:  Sometimes I want to write about my best ideas, too.  I certainly do it from time to time.   I write a lot about co-schooling, for example, because that was one of my best ideas ever (not that I came up with it entirely on my own, of course), and it continues to generate new good ideas, and I think it's an idea that hasn't spread and developed among homeschoolers as much as it should. But maybe I should be fair and write about bad ones as well.  

So I was thinking about sparking a little series or challenge — maybe some of you would be interested in participating — called "Good ideas, bad ideas" (or something like that).  

Even though it was homeschooling blogs that made me think of it, please take note:

YOU DO NOT HAVE TO BE A HOMESCHOOLER 

There are good ideas and bad ideas all over the place.  General parenting, marriage, family life, car repair, financial decisions, entertaining, etc.  

The idea of the challenge is to write a balanced post containing two stories on the same theme (e.g., homeschooling ideas, car repair, home decorating):   one good idea, one bad idea.  The best "bad ideas" are the ones that "seemed like a good idea at the time," of course, because they have a setup and a punchline.  In fact, maybe a better challenge is "good idea that turned out even better than I expected/seemed like a good idea at the time"

Now I'm really setting myself up — perhaps this post itself will turn out to be a bad idea —  because I don't have anything in particular in mind today.  Actually, the truth is that I was going to write about one of my good ideas, but it turned into this post instead, and I decided to go with it.  Now all I need is a bad idea to go with it.

I'm about to head out on a family outdoorsy outing, not to come back until late, so maybe I'll generate one in my head while I'm gone, and post tomorrow.  But I'll leave you to think of one, and maybe make a post on your own blog if you have one.  If you do, paste a link in the comments.