{8} unschooled for success…?

I find myself in the perplexing position of not having enough time to do the things I want to do. It’s frustrating and annoying.

It’s certainly born out of a sense of privilege, the idea that I should be allowed the time to do what I want, as opposed to what I am obligated to do. Work, pay bills, wash dishes…I was raised with those realities, and hell, due to my mother’s poor health I did most of the housekeeping from the time I was a young child.

But the other side of that coin is that I spent most of my childhood homeschooled. And not just schooled at home, but unschooled. For those who don’t know, “unschooling is an educational method and philosophy that advocates learner-chosen activities as a primary means for learning.” Ultimate freedom, in other words. There was no bedtime, no wake up time, no structured activities, no curricula, no grades.

The library was very literally my classroom, as were bookstores and museums and movies. Back in the 1970s, school supply stores were for teachers only, and mother had to negotiate with the store owner to be allowed to shop there and allow me along. I chose my own study books there, until I educated myself out of the k-12 offerings. Then we bought used textbooks from the local university library’s annual book sale.

In short, I gained a pretty good education from doing only what I wanted to do. The drawback, of course, is that I dropped my violin lessons (soooo much regret!) and never played any sports whatsoever (not nearly as much regret but I hear sports are good for kids). Nonetheless, I did well on my SATs and got into every college I applied for, including some prestigious institutions.

The moral of this lesson: I can be successful doing only what I want to do.

That idea is hard-wired into me. I’ve tried to short-circuit it, root it out, [insert ‘break the habit’ metaphor of choice here], and it remains. I even get mad at myself about it. Who am I to deserve that kind of freedom and choice? Why should I be an exception to the rule?

Nonetheless, it remains as a frustration, as a bone-deep honest confusion about why I am not doing things the way I want to do them.

Simple answer: day job.

Complex answer: day job, adulthood, lack of financial stability, anxiety, sleep, chores, errands...

Of course the solution is to make a plan, create a calendar of tasks, stick to the program. But…you see…that’s in direct opposition to the whole principle of unschooling. That is, essentially, creating a curriculum to follow.

I’ve spent my adulthood trying to conform to an ideology that claims success comes from careful planning, from following the rules, from forcing yourself to perfectly fit the box you want to fill. That always failed me in the past, and for the last five years I have been trying to compromise, find a middle way. It sounds so sensible, doesn’t it?

But for me, I think, it’s not. I think I’ve known this all along. Fitting into boxes is for me like the old version of the Cinderella fairytale, where the step-sisters cut off their toes to try and fit their feet into Cinderella’s shoe. I stopped doing that, hoping for another way to get myself to fit. But the fundamental truth I’m starting to accept is that trying to change myself is counterproductive.

I enrolled in public school for part of 7th and 8th grades, mostly because I begged my parents to let me go. I wanted to be like other kids, go to school, follow the curriculum, fit in.

I proceeded to have a nervous breakdown, and after my parents pulled me out of there, I stopped reading for several months.

So much for fitting in.

I feel the way I did then, drawn thin and taut. I keep circling around back to the question, why can’t I make this work the way I’m supposed to?

Then I remember: I was unschooled. I was never, ever going to do anything the way people are supposed to. My feet will never fit that shoe.

My problem isn’t lack of planning, or even lack of time. It’s lack of faith in myself, the belief (which I held so strongly in youth) that simply following my muse and my interests was success in and of itself, and that everything I needed would follow naturally from that, as it always had before, because I believed in my own abilities.

I’ll get where I need to be if I can learn to stop holding myself back.