Type B, Unambitious

This week as homeschoolers we learned about Julius Caesar. My favorite part about homeschooling--and my most successful method--has been the re-learning of history alongside my kids. I expect I learned about all of this when I was in school, but I likely wasn't paying attention, so a lot of it feels new and exciting to me! Instead of just rambling off tired facts, I get really excited: "You guys, he only had his pen to defend himself, and HIS FRIENDS JUST KEPT STABBING HIM TO DEATH! AAAHHH!!" While this might be a bit juvenile of me, it seems to make a bigger imprint in the girls' memory than just the monotone reading of a text. So I consider it an all-around win.

In learning about Julius Caesar, aside from being the first and most famous emperor of the Republic, we learned about how ambitious he was. When he wanted something, he went after it and expected success. Whether genuine or not, he won the support of pretty much everybody, and just walked right up the imperial ladder to the top.

Oh my gosh, this is SO not like me.

I have dreams like anybody, but I don't really care THAT much if I succeed or not. I'm not so devoted to my aspirations that I'm willing to knock down anybody else to get to where I want to be. Does this make me spineless? Maybe. I prefer to think of myself as happy to live in the moment. Like Ferdinand the Bull, I'm happy to just sit and smell the flowers. (I hope this is not just a skewed reflection of myself, justifying the fact that I am The Laziest.)

But I'm not really lazy at all (well, okay, I'm a little bit lazy).... I'm pretty high energy, most of the time. But I'm a little bit flighty and scatterbrained, and lose interest in things too easily to call any of my interests "ambitions." That's kind of a scary word, really... it implies followthrough. I'm more of an idea-haver. I have LOTS of ideas. And I talk a lot. So all of my ideas come out of my mouth, and after I've talked about them enough to feel like they are out of my system, I think, "Well, that was a good idea! NEXT!"

I read something recently about Type B Homeschooling (unfortunately, I can't remember who was touching on this, which is really unfortunate because I like to give credit where it's due, so if I find out who this was I will edit this part to add that in.) It was an encouraging word to homeschoolers like myself who do NOT thrive on lists and organization, and it made a suggestion that I've been doing since I started homeschooling (and actually I kept my housework list this way before I was homeschooling!) which is the retroactive list-keeeping method... instead of making a list of goals before you begin, you write down everything you've done AFTER you've done it! It's really brilliant, and it avoids the anxiety that comes from staring down an impossibly long list at the beginning of your day.

Another benefit of Type B homeschooling is that sometimes when I look over my retroactively written list at the end of the day, I see that we have learned A LOT. This is because we tend to start out our morning learning about one thing (usually history--we focus a lot on history) and as we learn about one topic we just follow these rabbit trails through our day of learning. We cover so many topics by hopping along from one thought to another. I know this idea probably makes a lot of my Type A friends kind of twitchy.... to start your day with NO LIST, and to just DO WHATEVER COMES TO MIND... and I can understand that feeling because that's how I feel about organization. But this style really works for us! I feel like my kids are learning so much, just because I am so scatterbrained!

One area that being Type B is not helpful is grocery shopping. Oh, gosh. The other day the girls all had doctor appointments early in the morning, and we ended up sitting in the waiting room for an hour and a half before even being seen. When we left it was a BEAUTIFUL day and they had been SUCH troopers during that long wait with everybody around us coughing (we are germaphobes)... so I thought we'd go to the grocery on the way home and get something yummy for lunch.

Except, I had no ideas about what would be a yummy thing to get for lunch. So we wandered around, got some lunch meat and rolls, some crackers, a bag of potatoes, some biscotti, and then I said, "LET'S GO SEE IF THEY HAVE HALLOWEEN MASKS!" and on the way to the seasonal section we had to stop and ogle the adorable baby clothes and pacifiers with attached plush foxes, and the Halloween section was SO MUCH FUN, and in the end we spent a full hour and too much money on a mediocre, overpriced lunch, and a collection of really fun masks.

And this is why some people shouldn't be parents.

Just kidding! Without the kids I would have no doubt spent my day in the exact same way, except the memory would be much lonelier.

I know this might not sound like encouragement, but really, I think Type B people who have no desire to rise to the top can be just as successful at life as people who thrive on organization and success! We all are living in our own little pockets of life, doing the best we can in our best way, and just because MY best way tends to give other people hives, that doesn't mean it's not it's own kind of successful.

I mean, isn't Ferdinand the Bull one of the best children's books of all time? It's like the Type B Personality Bible! But everybody loves it! So, if you have a personality like mine, one that might not not look to outsiders like it could be a homeschooling success (or a success at all,) just remember Ferdinand, and remind yourself that without people who are able to see the absolute beauty in an ordinary day and the simplest of things around you, the world would be different. I'm not sure how it would be different, since it doesn't always feel like appreciating flowers is really making an impact on... anything... but, I'm sure there's some kind of benefit to people like us hanging around.

Right?