Learning as a Tool for the Big Win

This was a week of learning in the Village.

Our Big Win

We’ve made some significant progress on the Farm front. I’m excited to tell you we’ve paid off the car!

The Renaissance Man was so funny. He pulled up the payment page on his phone, plugged in the final payoff number and then came looking for me so we could hit the submit button together.

I totally humored him. And then we high-fived.

He was acting like we’d never paid off a vehicle before. We have. A couple of them.

This, however is a big deal. In the past we had to finance used cars, so paying them off just meant we could trade it in for a newer car without negative equity.

This car we bought brand new with the plans to keep it at least 6 more years. Paying it off frees us to use that money to pay off other things and boost our savings.

And speaking of other things…

While I’ve been busy developing a writing habit and learning to balance work and home a little better, the Renaissance Man has take it upon himself to learn about the stock market.

He downloaded the Stash app at the suggestion of my brother and started learning.

And let me tell you, the intensely focused, over-achiever in him is sparkling like the overpriced diamond on the Princess’s finger.

Every morning this week, when I’m sitting next to the Padawan, doing school work in the morning, he’s been on my computer with a notebook at the ready, taking notes, researching companies and finding patterns.

He sat me down early in the week, to very seriously discuss the possibility of us investing in a few companies. We’ve been talking for years about creating a secondary income; a passive income. He feels this might be an option.

In theory, the stock market can provide that. In practice it looks more like a crap shoot, to me. That has always been my argument. We have never had the extra money to ‘play’ with. That $20 that might or might not turn into $100 was part of our meager grocery budget.

I couldn’t justify it then.

Today is a different story. We’ve got a little extra to play with.

I told him that much after he sat me down and explained how much he wanted to invest every month and where the money was coming from.

“As long as the bills are paid and there is food in the fridge, you can play. Just do your research.”

Now his goal is to let the money play itself for a while and then start paying us, so cross your fingers that all his research and focus on this works in our favor.

Know better, do better

The best part of life is learning new things. We do our best until we learn to do better, then we do better until we learn more. I get excited about learning new things and I will always support it.

Cosmetology class

That being said, I’ve been the Princess’ favorite guinea pig since she started beauty school.

We’ve been disagreeing about what to do with my hair for months. She wants to ‘touch up’ my color. I want to go natural so the gray blends better and I won’t need as many touch-ups. I especially didn’t want her to touch the white streak at my hair line above my eye.

She swore she couldn’t do a touch-up with out going over that part and I kind of feel like she could but didn’t want to.

Either way, I really needed a haircut. I keep my hair long but it was getting too long (to my waist) and the ends were all knotty and tangled. So I told her she could cut it but not color it. She didn’t like that answer.

This discussion has been going on for months.

Then she went to a class and came back with a compromise. She would color my hair so I could keep my white streak if I let her try the technique she learned.

I get that. The class was a look and learn. There was no hands on experience, no client, not even a disembodied mannequin head to practice on. She didn’t want to charge a client a couple hundred dollars for a technique she had never tried before.

So after she explained the results to me, I agreed.

This finally happened on Monday. Remind me next time to ask about the process and more specifically, how long it would take. If I had known it was going to take my entire afternoon, I totally wouldn’t have agreed.

I do like the results. She tells me that it will take about 6 months or 2 more sessions to get all the gold out of my hair but then it’ll be easy to maintain with a few foils every 6 months until I’m all white/grey and don’t need her services anymore. And that is my goal!

She also cut an extra two inches off the length than I wanted her to. I’m not going to complain too much because my hair grows fast, but my pony tail is so wimpy now. It barely swings.

Sometimes learning is hard and not so exciting

I had a heart to heart with the Padawan on Saturday.

Early in the week we struck a bargain. I would pay for an online account for his switch if he cleaned his room and did his chores without complaining. That way he could play with his cousin or brothers.

I would give him the week and if he got it done, we would sign him up on Sunday. After that, he would have to keep his room clean and if he didn’t I would take the switch away until he cleaned.

He was very excited and agreed with enthusiasm. However, over the next few days, I would suggest he work on his room and he would disregard my suggestion.

On Saturday, I reminded him about our agreement and pointed out that his room wasn’t clean so I would give him another week.

He was devastated. Not because he didn’t clean his room, but because he forgot about our agreement and was now facing tragic disappointment. If I hadn’t reminded him, he wouldn’t be sad.

Then came the excuses. He was just a kid and forgot things. He had a hard time staying focused on boring things like cleaning. It was my fault because I wouldn’t let him through away all his toys. Cleaning his room was really hard.

I just agreed with all of it because he’s not wrong. It is hard for eight year olds to clean their rooms, most of them anyway. I pointed out that I was very aware of the capabilities of 8 year old boys. I’ve already raised 4 of them. This whole bit wasn’t new to me. I’ve got almost 28 years of parenting under my belt.

He laughed because sometimes he forgets about that. His brothers are so much older than him.

It was hard for his brothers, too.

Then I pointed out that I knew that right now, his brain was at a critical point where it was imperative to teach it how to focus and organize. A few years ago, his brain wasn’t capable of those tasks and if we waited a few more, it would have already developed bad habits.

I told him it wouldn’t be easy at first, but I would help.

It was going to be a lot like Math. At first it was hard, but after he worked on it every day it got easier and the next thing he knew he had an A and was in the 85th percentile. Yes, sometimes its still hard to focus on the equations and sometimes he has to slow down and think about what he’s doing, but he knows math.

I promised him if he worked on keeping his room tidy every day, this, too, would get easier. And some day he would think cleaning his room is easy because mowing the lawn will be really hard. Just like he was wishing we were still working on addition because division is really hard!

Learning is fun and it is exciting but sometimes its hard and takes a lot of work. Do it anyway.

So this is your reminder to keep learning! Even if it’s hard.