I am really organized. I mean, really organized. I have lists and white boards and notes that only exist in my head. I have time lines and calendars in there too. I think I have always been this way. I blame it on being at the end of a long line of military people. I think this misconception of military life may have been what eventually lead me to joining the Air Force at the gentle age of 19. I have no idea what I was thinking. Maybe my Dad making the "half an hour early" rule the 11th commandment did it. Everyone knows if you aren't early you are late. Maybe it was just my minute by minute morning routine I strictly adhered to in high school that made me think I would feel at home in the middle of the war machine. I honestly don't know. I was terribly mistaken though.
I did not feel the kinship I had hoped for in the armed services. We were not a match. If we were on Love Connection I would get up and punch Chuck Woolery in the face for ever allowing that 3 year long date to happen. Not that I had learned anything about punching or fighting during my time. I barely learned how to shoot a gun. I couldn't understand why it didn't work. I was mystified, but I was most certainly getting the heck outta there. Then my one way ticket to civilian town came in the form of 2 blue lines on a pregnancy test. I was free. Free to mother and go back to making my own ridiculously particular schedule for me and my new baby to be.
This baby, who is now 8 years old and every bit her father, shed some light on this very enigma for me today. It hit me like a ton of bricks. I try very hard to curtail my daughter's education to not only her learning style, but also her personality. She is her father so I enlisted his feedback on some changes to her schedule that I was thinking of making. He concurred. She, like her father, is not good with unstructured time. They do not function well with the big picture. They need small achievable goals and time constraints. If given too much freedom they stare out the windows and completely poo away their time accomplishing nothing. Finally I had an answer to why she takes soooooo long to complete her work. She can't handle a day's worth of assignments and finish them by lunch. She has no idea where to start and therefore doesn't. Eureka!! this also shed some light on my own personality. I am a big picture person. I excel when given a large project or list of tasks. I like to schedule out the most efficient way to get it done. This is why online college worked so well for me. I could take a week's worth of assignments and allot time for them. I could figure out how to get it done. This is why it was such a disaster when I joined the military. I don't need someone to give me every detail and watch me do it. I just need the goal and I can run with it. Question answered.
It has only taken me ten years to come to this conclusion. Wow. So that is how I can homeschool, organize and plan. That is how I can figure out what we are going to eat for the next week. I am a big picture kind of girl. So I just have to keep that in mind when dealing with my daughter and husband. I have to do the opposite of what works for me. I can't tell you how many times this would have come in handy. Instead of asking Dan to clean the garage I just had to break it up into little tasks each day. Awesome, I have the power of mind control. Well, maybe not, but I think Freud would be impressed. So it has nothing to do with me being wimpy or prone to crying. It has nothing to do with my inability to fight or do pull ups. I am just not the military type. I don't fit the profile and yes I really do believe that. So shut up.
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