The Case of the Disgruntled Homeschooler

Subject:  Heathen Mom

Date:  About a month ago

Symptoms:  Fighting the desire to smack stupid people upside the head and many more that we can laugh about another day, lol!

Diagnosis:  Disgruntled homeschooler

Treatment:  Avoidance of all things that didn’t have to be done – That’s right people, I said it….a staycation was in order!

Outcome:  A renewed desire to debunk homeschooling myths, excitement to begin writing again and a happier Heathen Mom

About a month ago I was crazy busy trying to get things for our local homeschool group ready for the fall semester.  I started to be annoyed with, well pretty much everything.  I won’t get into specifics because a couple of people from our local group found my blog, but here is the general info.

I was annoyed because some new people had this ”kiss my ass or I will bad mouth the homeschool group to everyone I know” type of attitude.  Because of the people who had this attitude some people in leadership felt the need to keep these new people happy.  There were fears that these bad attitude people could ruin things in the community –  donations for the group, etc.

I personally don’t feel the need to kiss anyone’s ass to keep them happy.  As you can guess, I was the only one in leadership who took this stance.  Long story short, I made one of these new people mad.  Others in leadership were concerned about keeping the new people happy and I considered resigning from my leadership positions.  I didn’t want to be part of a group that worried so much about kissing up to new people (who had no desire to help the group) at the expense someone who volunteers in lots of ways for the group.  In the end, I didn’t resign and the kissing up to these people is no longer important to some of the others.

The result of the crazy drama and crazy schedule resulted in me deciding to take a break from just about everything.  Anything in our family that was extra went away for a few weeks.  No outside lessons for the kids, blogging, twittering, organized events….nothing that could make our schedule more crazy.  This lasted for about two weeks.

It was so nice, I can’t even put it in words.  When you look at the calendar and you really don’t have anything that had to be done….omg, heaven!  I highly recommend it if you are able to do so.

We have slowly been getting back into the swing of things as activities start back for the fall semester.  The last thing for me to add back was my online life.  Not writing for a few weeks gave me a chance to really think about why I am writing here at Heathen Homeschoolers.  I started this blog on a lark.  It took me awhile to realize that other people were reading it.  I love the fact that people take time out of their schedule to read what I write.  There are thousands of homeschooling blogs online.  The majority of the blogs are families who homeschool for religious reasons.  Since we homeschool for academic reasons, those blogs don’t really offer me the information that I need.  I have some that I like to visit, but the suggestions for activities and materials are not ones that I would ever really consider using with my kids.

Being away from my blog for a month showed me that debunking the myth that all homeschoolers choose to homeschool for religious reasons is very important to me.  There are more Heathen Homeschoolers out there.  I just have to help them find my blog.