Mom's School for the Gifted Part 1: Running a "Home" business

So imagine you show up to the first day at the job.  Your employer says it requires some patience and the ability to multitask.  Then he sits you down at the receptionist desk.  Your job is to field phone calls, make appointments, etc.  You'll also be required to design and maintain the company website, process payroll, go on sales calls and maintain a relationship with current clients.  After hours, the office will need cleaning, so you'll need to do that.  You'll also need to make him lunch and pick up his dry cleaning.

Except no employer is that stupid.

When I was little, my dad used to take me downtown to work with him.  I mostly went because I liked to twirl around in frilly dresses and the more people there were to look at me, the better.  I guess if you're the boss's daughter, they have to pretend you're really cute.  Also they had really good food in the cafeteria.  Somewhere along the line though, I did pick up on one of my dad's most successful business secrets.  Hire people to do what they love doing.  Don't make them do anything else.

He was ahead of his time.  I certainly don't believe most corporations did that then, and most still don't do it now, but I've never heard of a company that asked their receptionist to design a web page or had HR do their taxes.  You do the things that align with your skill set.

Personally I'm good at big picture thinking, I can create "systems."  Also, I went to grad school for child counseling and worked as a teacher and curriculum developer, so I write behavior plans, develop our home-school curriculum and have spent a lot of time researching and discussing a cohesive approach for my husband and I to co-parent.  But if you asked me to bake a loaf of bread....well you might as well ask the cleaning lady to write a corporate vision statement.  Big picture people don't do details well.  And baking requires details.  The last loaf of bread I baked my husband was kind enough to refer to as "Elven bread" because it was so "sustaining."  In other words, two bites filled you up because it didn't rise at all.  It's the kind of dense, tasteless stuff I imagine sailors ate because it tasted just as disgusting after 3 months at sea as it did the day it was baked.  Coincidentally, John has brought home a loaf of whole wheat bread from the local bakery every weeks since then.  There are some things you're great at.  And there are some things that are just worth outsourcing.  

How to outsource is Part 2, but for now lets figure out what your gifts are.  What is your skill set?  What things could you do effortlessly and efficiently all day?  If you were writing a resume and applying as a mother to your own kids, what would you say?    

Boredom and Lunch Tables

While I've encountered problems living in China these are NOT among them.  This is the first of a couple posts I hope to dedicate to the things I fear the most when going back to the US.  Boredom will be the first post, beating out my fears of not finding jobs, driving on a highway again, legal firearms, painfully bland foodand seasonal affective disorder.  

I'm not saying I don't have dear friends back home.  I'm also not saying there are no interesting people to meet.  I think there are just so many dear and interesting people that we have the luxury of choosing those who are exactly like us.  Having been homeschooled up until Jr. High, it wasn't until my first 7th grade lunch period when the girls started dragging desks around our homeroom to create separate tables that I realized I had to pick a "group."  In college it got even harder when I ended up being in both the Honors program and on the volleyball team.  The volleyball team tanned and partied with the basketball boys.  The Honors students clustered in the student lounge, studying and telling jokes about Descartes walking into a bar.  And I holed up in my dorm room and felt incredibly lonely, because you have to pick one, and those lunch tables just won't mix.  

This is the cool table...what makes you think you can sit here?

And I never stopped feeling like I had to choose.  Whenever I met new people, I felt like I was getting sized up.  Political views, theology, what I read, what I listen to, how much I make, what I'm wearing and whether or not my kids are gluten free.  It's like we're shifting the desks and dividing up all over again.  I'm just as guilty of it as anyone, having made my share of snide comments about everything from someone's taste in literature to what they ate for breakfast.  I even remember criticizing someone's favorite Thai restaurant.  At length.  Like there aren't bigger differences in the world that we need to worry about.  What I didn't realize is that if you stick with your lunch table group forever, you start running out of things to talk about.  You all shop at the same stores, read the same books and pretty much have the same philosophies about everything.  Maybe someone could take you out to a new restaurant except, oh yeah, you wrote that person off because they didn't know anything about authentic Thai food.  Mostly you just sit around agreeing with each other and slamming everyone who doesn't think like you.  How so-and-so must have spent a fortune on her dress ("sooo materialistic!") and so-and-so read Twilight ("soooo immature!") and so-and-so gave her kid a pop-tart for breakfast ("DOES SHE WANT HER KID TO DIE!?!? THE HUMANITY!!").  You have so much in common, in fact, there's no need to talk about much else.  When you can pick from 300 things to say that are going to be accepted by the group, why say the 1 thing that pops into your head that might cause a stir?

Why mention that you're lonely?  That you don't feel like there's anyone you can talk to about your real life.  That your unsure about your parenting.  That your unsure about your life in general.  That you wish God was more real to you.  That you really don't want to talk about all the benefits of breastfeeding.  Again.  That you gave your kid a pop-tart once and now you're afraid if anyone finds out, you won't have a lunch table anymore. 

I have three really good friends here.  One was a platoon leader that got a full scholarship to West Point and served two tours in Iraq and Afghanistan.  She's knows what she thinks and she's going to say it-lunch table etiquette be damned.  Around her, I don't feel like I have to pretend.  Another friend is from a hardscrabble neighborhood in Brooklyn where you couldn't pick a group that wasn't doing something or other illegal, so she's used to going against the current.  She doesn't spend a minute being insecure about her own choices and consequently doesn't waste a second judging others.  I feel no need to explain or justify anything.  Then there's my friend who went to Harvard and has a law degree and makes me explain or justify everything I say...because she honestly values my opinions and the reasoning that got me there.  She can't wait to talk to someone who thinks differently than she does because she knows it will help her to learn and explore and clarify.  It's the first time I've had to articulate everything I think so clearly and it's the first of many times I've had to recognize I hadn't thought through something or was just flat out wrong.  I actually have to think.  And be honest.  And be vulnerable.  I have to take ownership of my ideas and choices and feelings because they're actually mine now...not just "the group's."  Chances are that everyone won't agree with me.  And that's ok.  Because it gives us so much more to talk about.  

Which is why I really fear going back to the lunchroom.  Because I don't want to have to choose a group and I don't want to forever resign myself to an endless loop of breastfeeding and gluten conversations.  Because there are a lot of interesting people in the world with a lot of interesting things to say if it was a little more acceptable to just pick up your stupid lunch tray and sit down next to them.