If I look back on my blog, I can see that each year there were one or two ideas that just blew me away and ended up dominating my thinking. For example, 2011 my year to be obsessed with school –  homeschooling and higher ed, 2010 was my year for disillusionment with happiness research, 2009 was when I started writing honestly about how unglamorousstartup life really is.

1. Nature vs. nurture
An important book came out at the end of 2011 that got very little play in the media: Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids, by Bryan Caplan The title of the book is just awful. Which is probably why it has been roundly ignored. The title should have been Why Nothing You Do As a Parent Matters. That title would have gotten a lot of media coverage, but who would have purchased the book?

No one. Because as parents we are invested in the idea that what we do matters. But it turns out that what parents do doesn’t matter very much. This book is a compendium of evidence from a wide range of university studies that show that once basic needs of a child are met, parents do not really affect how their kids turn out.

Here’s an example of the reach of this evidence: The age that boys first have sex is determined genetically. You cannot influence it by talking to the kid, or preaching to the kid, or whatever. The evidence is astounding. But also disheartening. Because then what does it matter what are parents doing?

One thing is that they can affect how much kids appreciate them as adults. This is influenced by the parents completely. So as this research gains public attention, the shift we will see in spending will be toward things that parents and kids experience together. We don’t need to spend money on shaping the child when the child is already in the shape he or she will be. We can focus on spending money to help the child connect with the parent in a meaningful way that will last their whole lives. That’s all we can influence, as much as we wish it to be otherwise.

2. Lean startup thinking
At this point, the idea of the lean startup is not that new. That's the method for launching a startup where you continually ask questions and refine as opposed to setting up a goal and driving unequivocally in that direction. It's a process for dealing with the reality that we don't know what will work and what won't work. Eric Ries came up with the idea, wrote a book about it, and now he's at Harvard evangelizing it to the next generation of entrepreneurs. The idea took hold of the Silicon Valley crowd first, of course, but at this point, the idea of the lean startup has infiltrated entrepreneur circles in middle America as well.

The lean startup is such a strong, salient idea for our era because it is the natural response to the situation where we have the ability to gather information quickly and move quickly. But why do we only apply this idea to companies? Why not also apply it to our lives? We don't need to figure out a goal when we are in our 20s and then move toward that goal. We can constantly gather information, ask questions, and readjust our goals. Our lives should run as lean as our startups do, which is to say, aiming to get rid of the baggage from goals we once thought might work but now clearly will not.

Next, we should stop investing in our lives as if they are set in stone. The less stuff we have, the lower our monthly costs are, the more flexible we can be to respond to new information about what really works for each of us, in our own lives.

3. Fake is an art form.
Instead of fighting against fake, maybe we should celebrate it. After all, we have a long history of loving fakery. You know what the people did with the discovery of oil paint? Now that they could make lines and colors so precise as to look real, they started painting pictures of beautiful women for men to hold onto when they couldn't have a real one. (Girl With the Pearl Earring, by Tracy Chevalier, is a great story of this practice.) Andy Warhol devoted his life to making art about our love of the fake.

So here we are, in 2012, and did you check out the photo of the Apple store at the top of this post? Here's another photo of the store.

Guess what? It's a fake Apple store in the middle of nowhere in China. All the employees think they are working for Apple. And the customers think they are buying from Apple. And though some mistakes are obvious, a former Apple store employee stumbled upon the store and she documents all the little details the store owners got wrong in a very fun blog post.

I want to tell you this is thievery and dishonest and an international crime. But you know what? I love it. Fake is fun, and China is just amazing at it.

4. The rise of career centers.
At some point, there's going to be a huge shift in university politics, and the head of the career center is going to be the god of academia. That's because the value of a school is no longer in the knowledge it spews—anyone can take the classes online. Anyone can access the teacher's papers online, and anyone can email the professor with a good question.

The value in the school is the jobs kids get after they graduate. For some schools, just the name of the school will open doors. For most schools, though, this is not true. And for those schools, the career center has an opportunity to add huge value to the diploma.

At some point, university administrators will stop courting physics professors and start courting a high-profile head of the career center. Because right now the career centers are throwing the students under the bus.

You know what will make this shift go much faster? When US News and World Report gets a reality check about what people reallly want to know about higher education, and they start publishing lists of schools ranked by how well they place kids in the job market after graduation. There's nothing like a new list criteria to force the hand of university presidents. (And in the meantime, we should complain loudly that US News and World Report uses largely irrelevant criteria for school rankings, like class size. It's 2012. If you don't like the size of your class, go online and have a class of one, and then meet your professor during office hours.)

5. The compounding effect. The guy who publishes Success magazine, Darren Hardy, wrote a book called The Compound Effect. I liked the book as soon as I heard the title. I thought to myself, "Of course! Making good career decisions every month is like putting money in a 401K every month!" The thing is that most of us are not putting money in a 401K every month. (And it probably doesn't matter, because saving for retirement is an antiquated approach to life.) But most of us can get the compound effect by making solid decisions each month, again and again and again.

The opening of Hardy's book is: "Ever heard the story of the tortoise and the hare? Ladies and gentlemen, I'm the tortoise. Give me enough time, and I will beat virtually anybody, anytime, in any competition? Why? Not because I'm the best or the smartest or the fastest. I'll win because of the positive habits I've developed, and because of the consistency I use in applying those habits."

I like that. I like the idea of making lots of good small decisions about my career knowing that the compound effect will create big rewards over time. Which reminds me of the idea that captured my attention in 2008: having a strong career is so much more rewarding than having a 401K.

And for parents, schooling discussions are really earning discussions. Because you can say that kids with a love of learning are lifelong learners (essential for workplace success today), but truly, who wants an unemployed Ph.D candidate? You don't want a lawyer who can't get a job because of poor social skills, you don't want a kid with  perfect SAT scores who marries for money because supporting oneself seems too hard. Every parent wants to raise a kid who is capable of supporting himself and capable of finding engaging work for a stable life.

Here's how schooling affects earning power.

1. Focus on pre-K through third grade. 
Why focus on pre-K? There is very solid data that the earning power of kids who attend a pre-K program is so much higher than kids who don’t that Head Start is one of the most sacred of all publicly funded programs in the US.  So the school impact on one’s earning potential starts in pre-K.

Why third grade? Research from Project STAR shows that after third grade, the quality of one’s classroom has little impact on one’s future earning potential.  There is clear data (spanning 25 years and researchers at six universities) that shows that test scores after third grade are not indicators of future earning potential.

2. Ignore standardized test results, obsess over self-confidence levels.
This means, of course, that it doesn’t matter how one performs on national standardized tests since those test scores do not have impact on the sixty years one spends in the workforce.

And this conclusion is consistent with one of my favorite studies in the whole world: It is from Alan Kreuger, professor at Princeton, that shows that while it is true that kids who go to Harvard and Princeton have advantages over others when it comes to future earning, you can get those same advantages just by applying to those schools. It’s having ambition and believing in yourself that are the real harbingers of success. The fancy diploma is a red herring.

3. Teach kids to find mentors.
Faye Crosby, professor at the University of Santa Cruz says that the two most important factors in a person’s earning potential are quality of schooling and quality of mentoring. Now we know that the schooling part of this equation is up to third grade. So maybe, starting in fourth grade, we should be teaching our kids how to get the best mentors.

Let’s consider what life would look like if you took all fourth graders out of school and started teaching them how to get mentors. First of all, the act of finding a mentor is very consistent with what current research on education reform says that kids should be doing: Following the paths that interest them and finding someone to guide them.

4. The best schooling after third grade is unschooling.
Here is a fascinating article from Psychology Today about why school reform will not work because schools are so incredibly ill-suited for teaching kids. In fact, the formula for school—telling kids what they should learn and how they should learn—is a method only for killing their creativity.

Lisa Neilsen, who manages teacher training for New York City public schools, also comes down hard on the classroom structure. She tells parents that kids should learn in a project-based program where the lesson plans are dictated by a child’s current interests. Neilsen says that if the school won’t do that for your kid, take your kid out of school.

5. Aim for out of the box. Way out of the box. That's when things will look right.
So let’s say you take the advice of people whose job is to study what is the best way to teach your kid. Let’s say you take the advice of the reams of research about what factors influence a child’s future earning potential.

What you are left with is waking up every day, asking your child what he or she wants to do, and then finding someone to help them, if you are are not the right person. Some days you will offer up some ideas, some days your kid will say no to everything and decide to play video games.

Here’s what I’m doing to increase my fourth-grader’s earning potential: Pottery.

He told me he wanted to do clay. He said he’s upset that each year of school he got to do a clay project, and this year, since we’re homeschooling, he’s going to miss it.

So I did a little Googling, and I found a pottery studio: Bethel Horizons. (It is Christian, of course. Everything in rural America that has funding is either government or Christian.)

The minute I walked into the studio, I knew we were so lucky. Krista is the pottery teacher, and she took incredible care to make sure each step was a way to focus mentally and "connect with the clay."

She showed him how to use machines and tools and she showed him that part of the process is keeping the workspace neat and clean so the brain and the hands can work in peace.

Then Krista told my son he'd make a pot each time he sits at the wheel. I thought about the study about pottery in Malcolm Gladwell's book Outliers. Students who were asked to make one, great pot, learned much slower than kids who made a terrible pot each time at the wheel. Greatness comes from lots of terribleness, so I liked that we were on that path.

I coach so many people who want advice about their career, but so often, these people really just need to learn how to figure out what they want:  experiment, find what might be fun. Try it for a bit. People need coaching on how to take risks and not worry if they fail. People need coaching on how to find a mentor who is invested in their particular path. I see that all these things are related to earning power, and all these things are what kids learn when they direct their own curriculum.

So, my son probably will not grow up to make expensive pots to sell. But I know that while he's skipping school and managing his pottery-learning himself, his earning power is going up, and it's a joy to watch.

I must also admit that I ended up in a mental ward. Maybe from postpartum depression, but probably from the stress of being the sole breadwinner and a stay-at-home mom.

I am having flashbacks. Because I'm homeschooling now – both boys. I never really believed I’d do this. When I launched my homeschooling blog I actually thought I was just exploring a trend. I thought I’d just write a little about how it’s clear to me that there is about to be a homeschooling revolution.

But that’s not what happened.

Because then I noticed how the US school system is really just the biggest babysitting institution in the world. My first clue, probably, was that I was dying to have my kids back in school so I could have my life back. What else can I do to get time alone? How else can I do some work? Work is very fun.

I love work. I love how people tell me how great I am when I am right. I love when I sell something and make a lot of money, when I create a great job for someone, when I give great career advice. Work is so rewarding. I get accolades and I get money. It’s a toxic combination.

And kids at home without school is just impossible. There is no reward system. There is no announcement that the mom has done a good job. We don’t even know what a good job is.

So in the middle of realizing that school is really just a babysitting service, I became militant. I realized that public school is like Social Security. There is no money to do what we are pretending we are aiming to do. We should just grow up and admit that we cannot have effective public schools for everyone.  Just like we cannot have Social Security for everyone.

But parents in the middle class can have one parent working and one parent home with their kids.

I feel like I have no choice. Because while I was waiting for the kids to go back to school, I was reading. And, of course, now my homeschool site makes me a magnet for research about school. And the evidence is overwhelming that schools are not meeting the educational needs of children:

• Unstructured play is more important than everything else for young kids.
• Test scores are not important.
• The homeschool trend is huge among educated parents.
• Passion-based learning is an impossible goal with 30 kids and one teacher. 
• Almost all serious talk of school reform is about redefining what school is.

I challenge you to read these links and tell me you don’t think homeschool would be better for your kids. And this is why I tell myself that I have to make homeschooling work.

Believe me. There is absolutely no evidence that middle class kids from college-educated parents should be sitting in a classroom. Find me some. Really. Put it in the comments. Because if I could have found some, my kids would be in a classroom today.

But you know what? I can’t figure out how to get my work done and do homeschool too. I can’t figure out: Should I work more to pay for more childcare so I can work more? I know I don’t want the pressure of trying to have a big job and be a mom. I want to be a mom and I want to have an interesting job. And, I guess, I want to figure out how much more I have to work in order to pay for somehow getting a break from the kids.

I feel so bad writing that.  A break from the kids. But that’s what sending kids to school is. Giving the parents a break. So I guess I’m still doing that. I’m still planning to get some sort of break.  I’m just not calling it school.

Last week, all I could think of for my break was shopping at Forever 21. And I am hopeful that maybe it counted as homeschooling, too.

I need to divide everything into very little projects in order to ensure that one project does not ruin everything else around me. This is why, in the past, blog posts have been the perfect length for me, and having a startup has derailed my whole life.

The first thing I’m launching today is a homeschooling section. To be clear, I don’t homeschool. But I definitely think it’s a huge trend that will shake up all of our lives, because homschoolers will take over the workplace in the next ten years. I am worried that I’m making the wrong decision by keeping my kids in school. So this is the spot where I will worry about it discuss it. Here is the post where I explain in more detail why I'm adding the homeschool section.

The other section that I’m launching is Mailbag.

I answer all my email. People are often shocked by this, which, in turn, shocks me. I mean, what am I writing a blog for if I don’t want to communicate with people?  But I decided I should publish the questions and answers since many people ask the same type of questions. (Don't worry, I'm changing details to conceal the writer's identity.)

When I met my Ex he was working for Sony. He was in charge of online properties for Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune. The marketing people always said that people watch Jeopardy to say “He’s so smart!” and people watch Wheel of Fortune to say “He’s so stupid!”

I think that marketing approach may be applicable to the questions in Mailbag. Hopefully you will think my answers are smart. But if you don’t, there's room for you to give your own answers.

On Sundays my Ex comes to our house to hang out with the kids, which made today a great day for my launch.

Also, do you ever wonder what my Ex looks like? Here he is — well, about one-third of him — with my son.

Here's a question I get a lot: Does your Ex mind being on your blog?

Here's the answer: He's probably really happy  being on with just one-third.

I can see why she wouldn't want to have to deal with me. But, if I am not a reliable reference then I'm probably also, in her eyes, not a reliable person for assessing whether the job that Melissa took is totally stupid for her to take. So maybe she is just ignoring my blog anyway. Or maybe she is printing out each post and putting it on she office wall and throwing darts at it.

The second-to-last day Melissa was here, we went berry picking.

The farm is full of little pockets of wild blackberries. And we set out to pick enough for me to make a pie.

We sort of stick together, but it's fun to search the sides of the hayfields til you find your own bush full of berries.

We each took our own bucket and, did you ever read that book Blueberries for Sal? In the book, the little kid eats more berries than she puts in her bucket. It's best to do that when you think no one's looking.

After a while, it starts to feel like you have picked everything. And you don't want to go back where someone else has picked, but as you walk toward that place where they have already picked, invariably, you find plenty that they missed.

If you approach a bush from the left, you end up missing the berries you'd find if you approached the bush from the right. And, really, the angles of approach are infinite. For example, my son specializes in the berries growing closer to the ground.

The same variety of approach exists for career coaching as well. I, for one, have given bad career advice (like, for example, to my brother's college roommate,) and most of the time that I've given bad career advice it's been because I have a perspective that just doesn't shift in that instance. For example, I have very little patience for people who won't leave a terrible career because they need to earn six-figures.

So–back to Melissa. I have told her before that I think she is a phenomenal photographer. I think she should earn a living doing that. Melissa has a problem that is really, really common for people with Asperger Syndrome. She is almost always the smartest person in the room, but she can't last in a job.

She is not alone. People think they would like to hire me, but really, I'm a nightmare. And really, at this point in my life, I don't think I would try to do life without an assistant. I'm just not good enough at the day-to-day life that non-Asperger's people find manageable. Like, going to the DMV, sitting through a long, loud dinner , or navigating an airport.

The issue here is executive function. People with Asperger's have terrible executive function. We cannot stay focused on the thing that is most important. We are easily distracted by what is most interesting. This is a low-level problem for everyone. But for someone with Asperger's it means forgetting to respond to someone who says, "Hi, how are you?" or, literally, burning down the house.

You won't believe what I am about to tell you. Melissa's new job is an executive assistant. I asked her, "What? How can someone with terrible executive function take a job with the word executive in it?"

"Shut up," she says. "You were a CEO. That's executive."

We have this fight all the time. I think she should work at Forever 21, which is her favorite store, and do photography on the side. Today, retail is a totally respectable career path, and the trend to do a day job while you get the real job up and running is so mainstream that Jon Acuff just published a book called Quitter: Closing the Gap Between Your Day Job and Your Dream Job.

Melissa does not want to work at Forever 21. She is making way more money at the job which I am not going to name because maybe if I don't name the company then Melissa won't be mad that I'm writing this post.

Yesterday, Melissa packed up her life. She is great at packing. She changes countries every year, so Wisconsin to Texas is nothing for her. It's not a move so much as a hop, skip, and jump. She wheels and deals frequent flier miles until she lines up her international miles to coincide with her local miles and her premier flier perks and soon she's flying six suitcases for free with a seat upgrade to boot.

She throws out fashion souvenirs of Milan and Hong Kong and Shanghai and other places where the clothes don't work on a farm, or in Austin, Texas.

As she moves her clothes out of the cupboard, I move my books back in.

I'm a grouch that Melissa is moving, but I am happy to have a place for my books. I lift up the old wooden door we used as a makeshift desk, and I forgot she raised the door to the right height by putting books underneath.

I find Picture This, by Molly Bang. It is one of my favorite books ever. Every designer in the world should read this book, and anyone who wants to give criticism to designers should read this book. In fact–Wait. I have an idea. Designers: pass this book out to everyone you have to work with, and tell them, "You cannot give me input about my design until you have read this book." This is a great strategy because smart people will read the book and understand that design is way too hard for them to be telling you they don't like the color blue. And dumb people mostly don't read books so most of them won't read the book and you will never have to talk to them.

Melissa is packing and I am unpacking and we are both sad. I will miss Melissa and anyway, I really think if the Farmer was going to cheat, he'd find someone to cheat with without my help. It's not like men are dependent on their wives supplying resources for cheating. (If they were though, wouldn't it be a great world?)

Melissa wants me to understand why she is leaving. I don't want to be overbearing. I know the kinds of parents who want you to do what they want you to do. I think half of my coaching business is giving people in their 20s confidence to choose a life that their parents think is totally stupid. I don't want to play the role of that limiting parental influence.

Then the phone rings, and I hear Melissa talking to her friend Missa. Melissa sounds like a college girl. She talks about things I don't care about like Facebook status updates, straightening hair, new stores in Austin. I realize that Melissa is a twentysomething who has adjusted to my family life in order to get stability. But now she needs to go back to her twentysomething life.

Of course I think the choices she is making are lame. Everyone thought the choices I made in my twenties were lame. I stuck with them, but I wish I had had more confidence doing that. I wish I had believed more in my ability to steer my own life.

So I hug Melissa. I don't like touching anyone besides the Farmer and my kids, so it's a big deal that I'm hugging Melissa. She knows that. I tell her, "You need to go be a 27 year old, right? That's what you're doing. I get it."

The next day, we try the berries again. It's absurd that we are doing it the day she is leaving. But I think it's normal to cope with a very sad goodbye by ignoring it. Besides, the berries are only ripe for a few days each summer and I don't want to miss them.

We go back to where we were the day before. We each go to places we didn't go yesterday, and I find myself watching everyone else find berries that the other people missed. I want to be the person who can see answers from many perspectives.

I want to help people by seeing past my own experience to a place where the number-one value is people making their own decisions—good or bad. I want to help my children do that, too. But I think the first step is for me to work on helping myself to have faith in my ability to make my own decisions.

My son woke up every morning and fed his pigs, for six months. And after three months, he walked with the pigs, around in a circle, twice a day, to train the pig for the show.

There is huge variety in the amount of help parents give their kids in these projects. Some kids' parents buy show pigs from out of state and the kids take very little care of them until the fair. Some kids do everything themselves.

I think it's a lot like an allowance for a city kid. Each family manages the potential pitfalls of an allowance themselves. (My brother is a banker and he uses allowances to teach the concept of compound interest.) We decided it would be best if our son did most of the work. Doing the work is more important to us than getting a ribbon.

While my son trained the pig, the Farmer trained my son. So much of going to the county fair with a pig is showmanship. There are rules you could never know being an outsider: Always make eye contact with the judge, never show frustration with the pig, keep the pig between you and the judge.

That first rule is huge for my son. He has Asperger’s and his eye contact is naturally limited. For someone with Asperger’s, eye contact is awkward, overwhelming, and extremely tiring.

The Farmer understands this problem very well,  because when the Farmer is having a difficult discussion with me, I cover my eyes. So he focused especially on teaching our son to make eye contact with the judge.

The day of the fair, my son was dressed up. Well, for a farmer. He had on a collared shirt and clean jeans. He had all the accoutrements of a great pig showman, including the brush you use in case the pig gets dirty in the ring. (You brush off the dirt when the judge is not looking – another tricky rule that no city person could glean.) He stood by the pen, watching his pigs, all cleaned up and ready to go for nearly an hour.

We had been preparing for so long. We had done preparation to help my son deal emotionally with the pigs getting slaughtered. We had prepared him for the chaos of lots of pigs, and utter boredom of waiting for his pigs' weight class to be called. We had not prepared him for the huge tension that permeated the ring.

My son showed four different times. The first time he showed his pig by weight. His pig weighed 287 pounds. As he waited by the show ring for his turn, we realized  he would be showing his pig in a weight class with all older kids.

The ring was hot and crowded and chaotic. But guess what? He did a great job.

It turns out that the Farmer was not quite up to date on showing pigs. For one thing, people shave their pigs now and we didn't know that. So we had the only hairy pig. Another thing: The pig show does not reward pigs who are healthy and trouble-free and can be raised in a profitable family business. So, the pig show rewards a certain kind of shape and heft and it's a type the Farmer doesn't raise, so I can't tell you that our pigs placed very high in the competition.

All those unexpected obstacles did not faze my son. He stuck to what we practiced and did well at that. We showed his pigs three more times. Each time he got a little more confident. And I felt like my son was growing up, right in front of me. There is so much you can do to prepare for the world, but really, you grow only as you succeed or fail. You learn so much about yourself in that moment.

I watched the Farmer watch our son.

And we were both nervous. It's good to have the feeling that at some point, there is nothing more you can do. At some point, it's time to fail or not fail. Those moments have been so important for me, and for the Farmer, and I was glad we could give that moment to my son.

And, he still got a ribbon. Third place.

I found myself hugging and kissing the Farmer a gazillion times – one for every hour they spent together practicing. And when there was a special category for kids from farm families (technically: for pigs that were raised on the same farm as the mother pig) where there were only eight qualifying kids (out of about 200 kids showing pigs) and I was so happy to have my son in that bunch. I'm so happy I'm raising my kids on a farm.

Sunday was the auction. The Farmer helped my son wash the pigs to get them ready. This was two days after my son showed his pigs, so by now, he felt like a pro around the stalls at the fair.

I know that the lesson here is that running a business and earning money is really hard work. But the sweetness of my son and the Farmer working together made me choke up again and again. I think there is also a lesson here that if you work with people you love working with, it doesn't really feel like work.

I was actually worried sick that my son's pig wouldn't sell. Most county fairs have a 4H show, but they don't auction the animals because there wouldn't be enough bidders. Our county, Lafayette, has an auction that is renowned, even in Wisconsin, for having huge community support. The local businesses bid way above market and neighbors bid on each others' animals for the sole purpose of creating a good community that teaches kids how to raise an animal and sell it.

To give you an idea of how special this community is when it comes to the 4H auction, San Diego County has 3 million people and it raises $400,000 at their 4H auction at the county fair. Lafayette County raises $100,000 from a population of 15,000.

This is the first sale of the auction.

I was so nervous that Melissa told me, "No more talking!" But I ended up making her register as a bidder because I was so scared that no one would bid.

The auctioneer announces the parents of the kid. I think this is why three bunnies sold for $600. When the auctioneer said "Penelope Trunk," I felt ill. But then it all happened so fast. He came into the ring, and he looked so in tune with his pig, and so self-confident in his ability to manage the pig.

Bidding started. Market price for a pig like this is sixty cents a pound. The Farmer said anything over ninety-nine cents is a good sale. I told Melissa she should bid if it doesn't go to a dollar a pound. But right away, the bidding got to a dollar. And the pig sold for $2.50 a pound.

I get choked up writing this. The guy who bought the pig is a guy who buys a lot of cattle from the Farmer. The guy who bought the pig is a farmer himself. He'll eat the pork, for sure, but I'm sure he bought the pig because he believes in 4H and the county fair and what it teaches kids. And he believes we are part of the community, too: me and my sons and the Farmer.

Also, I'm a fanatic about routine. After years of obsessive research about what makes people happy, I have determined that self-discipline is the key to happiness. And self-discipline is really difficult, but not in the context of routine. So I love routine and I hate vacations because they disrupt routine.

So I was surprised when the Hampton Inn offered me free nights in any hotel if I would write about it. After all, it's not just that I don't like vacations. Also, I'm the person who wrote about why I think travel is a waste of time, and one of the most popular posts on this blog about vacations is why it's okay to work during vacation.

But now that I am basically raising farm boys, I am careful to take them to the city so they know what it's like. Digression: I have heard that one of the biggest problems the Ivy League has with attracting kids from rural America is the rural kids with high enough test scores simply can't handle living in a city – yes, New Haven counts as a city to a farm kid. So while you are sending your kids to SAT tutors to get your kids into college, I'll be sending my kids to ride NYC subways.

So, back to the hotel. I used the free offer this week to stay in the Skokie, IL Hampton Inn while I was at Suzuki cello camp with my son. That's right. This is my idea of vacation for my kid. He's only six years old, so he doesn't know other kids are going to Disney World.

We do five hours of cello lessons during the day, and then we come back to our hotel. And I have to say, he totally loves the hotel.

The whole day is very structured for my son. So when we come back, I let him do whatever he wants until bed time.

First we swim.

Then he tracks pool water through the lobby to get some lemonade and a cookie. The hotel staff is totally kid friendly, though I can't help wondering if someone told them to be extra nice to us.

When I lived in New York City, I didn't ever cook a meal, which is normal for NYC.  But on the farm, I cook three meals a day. And like I said, I like routine. So I asked for a room with a kitchen. I had grand plans for nice dinners, just me and my son (and Melissa for one night). But he reminded me that I told him he could choose what we do after camp, and he chose peanut butter & jelly. Every night.

He practices after dinner at home, so we did that here, too. It's amazing how if you tell a kid that practice is every night, and you follow through with that plan, then the kid doesn't think to get out of it even though he's played already for five hours.

I've been thinking about this all week – how routine is the most powerful tool for creating self-discipline. But I find that when it comes to myself, I lack the self-discipline to stick to the routine that would increase my self-discipline.

I'm better at routine when it comes to my kids.

By bedtime, I am exhausted.

All week I've been thinking I'm going to write a blog post after I put him to sleep. Because I love my job. And I feel  disoriented on days when I don't do it.

But, look. It's been a week since I posted. I find that if I lay down with him for a book before bed, there is no getting me out when the last page is read.

It is not perfect. A few weeks ago, my Ex left early because I'm so annoying to him. And just this morning, the Farmer and I had a fight that scared the kids so much they cried. But I think we are doing okay. And on Father's Day I feel particularly grateful for both men, because they work really hard to make sure the kids feel like they have an integrated, stable family.

The New York Times says that women go into politics to change something, and men go into politics to be someone. I think this is true for all work, not just politics. I think women are more likely to feel important because they are home with kids, which is why more women than men leave the workforce to be with kids.

Men are changing how they parent, but not too much, because there's still this survey from ERE that shows men prefer work to being home with kids. I do not believe we can change things completely. We are who we are. Men and women are different. The more I write about these differences in the workplace, the more I appreciate the differences at home.

We all know that if a mom is at the playground with three kids, no one notices, but if a dad is there, people say, "He's such a great dad."

I know that Father's Day is traditionally the day to say how great dads are blah blah. But I have a feeling that the biggest compliment we can say to a dad is that he's showing up. He's there, reliably, doing his job, and it's no big deal. Because dads are expected to do their job.

So today my Ex played with the kids while I surfed the web, and I saw that the Farmer posted to his blog about Father's Day. And he quoted my son's blog, about the farm. And now I'm going to quote both those posts. And if you are thinking that you are blogging because you are going to earn money from it, think again. Blogging is about ideas, self-discovery, and growth. And anyone who lives a life about ideas and self-discovery will be worth more in the workplace, no matter who else is reading your blog.

So, here's the Farmer's post from his blog, that quotes my son's post from my son's blog:

Happy Father's Day!

This is my second Father’s Day, but the first where I feel I’ve really put in the work.  Parenting has more challenges than rewards, but I’m thankful to have the opportunity.

Shepherd is a budding writer, and updates a blog for family and friends.  I thought I would share the following entry from his blog.  It made my day.

Last year I raised baby tadpoles and set them free as frogs. And this year I’m going to do it again. A few days ago, I went down to my grandparents pond with my dad and we caught one very interested toad, but we let it go because the tadpoles are what we want to raise and we will just let frogs and toads be loose. That’s the main thing in project.

It’s fun to catch the tadpoles in the pond. Me and my dad also caught a leopard frog. It’s a not a frog-sized leopard! It’s basically a leopard-quick frog that’s yellow with black dots, but not poisonous.

Two big achievements that me and my dad made were:

1. Catching a bullfrog tadpole with legs. The back row of legs, that is.

2. Another thing we did was we found the tadpole nest. But we didn’t take anything from it because it would disturb the nest. That’s where we found a leopard frog, but we didn’t catch it. We found the leopard we caught on our way back to the truck. The reason we didn’t keep the frogs and toads we caught was because they would probably eat the small tadpoles.

I had a great time.

The farmer tells me that farmers are going to the Capitol to protest on Saturday.

I tell him I think it’s stupid. It’s not like Walker broke a law. People who voted for him should think twice about right-wing fascists next time they go to the polls.

The farmer says fine. He wants to go and he wants to take the kids.

I want to be supportive. I say, “The kids will go nuts there with so many people. I’ll go with you to help with the kids.”

He says, “Actually, I am okay handling the kids in crowds. The person who is most likely to go nuts in a crowd is you. So it'd be better if you stayed home anyway.”

I say, “Ok. Thanks.” And I say, “I don’t want to start a fight. I just want to understand. Why  are you going now? It’s over. Walker won.”

He thinks. Then he says, “Farmers want to show that Walker had a mandate, but he took it too far. We want honesty. Walker said it was a budget issue. But he should have said, ‘Let’s debate collective bargaining.’”

I don’t say anything. Well, I try not to, because I’m trying to be less argumentative with the farmer. But I can’t resist: “Why are you taking the kids?”

“It’s an historical moment. It’s the end of collective bargaining. I want them to be there.”

My ex emails the farmer to see if he’s going to the farmer protest. My ex will be there with his girlfriend, who teaches first grade in public school.

So the farmer and the kids met my ex and his girlfriend for a day of peaceful protest. And the farmer took pictures.

I am struck by the fact that people identify themselves with their profession when they protest at the Capitol. Work and democracy are so closely tied together. That’s clear in the Middle-East, where the upheavals are largely because autocracy does not create the type of vibrant economy that provides people with jobs. But the connection between work and democracy is clear in Wisconsin as well.

This is a good lesson for the boys – work is not just for money, it’s for a good life, and it's a way to feel valued by society.

But the big lesson of the day might be that the boys have a cohesive family because their dad and their step-dad have similar values: Democracy is precious and we need to participate to protect it.

The upshot in our house is that everyone had fun. They were bursting with stories:  People dressed in cow costumes! Susan Sarandon was there!

I asked the boys, “What was your favorite chant?”

And both boys yelled: “Tell me what democracy looks like! This is what democracy looks like!”

Right now, a trending topic is “Volkswagen commercial” which is about their new Super Bowl commercial. Volkswagen has conveniently released the commercial early so we don’t have to spend this Sunday watching men giving each other concussions to see it.

Here’s the commercial:

This makes me happy to be part of Generation X. First of all, this is the small window of time when Generation X will have the largest buying power in the consumer market. We are at our highest earning power, which, admittedly, is not impressive, but earnings are all relative, and people are discriminating against the Baby Boomers because of their age, so it’s our heyday.

It’s also our heyday because Gen X values are front and center. And we’re about family. We don’t earn as much as Baby Boomers did because we work such fewer hours. We’ve downsized our careers to take care of our kids.  We’ve taken back the dignity of working part-time. We’ve deconstructed stay-at-home parenting as a respectful career alternative.

So I love this commercial because it captures the shared experience of Generation X. We like being home to make our kids peanut butter and jelly. You could not sell Baby Boomers with this. They think it’s lame to sit in a kitchen waiting for your kid to be hungry. We like having a male breadwinner and we’re not afraid to say it.

And we are surrounded by little boys in love with Star Wars.

When we look back, we will see that Gen X redefined family and work. We are the first generation that gave women a choice to do anything they want. So we’re the generation that reveals that what women really want is to be with their kids. Maybe not all the time. But more than men. That’s for sure.

The woman in the kitchen is not glamorous. She’s efficient, self-confident, and she knows what her child needs. She looks like she was vice-president-of-something before she had kids. And she appears to have managed to keep a marriage together, which is something Generation X works harder at than their parents did. (The divorce rate for college-educated white women is now less than 2%.)

The moment at the end of the commercial is so intimate. The father knows his son so well that he can participate in the Darth Vader game that he hasn’t even been home to see unfolding. And as a husband he can talk to his wife with a raise of an eyebrow.

The family has a car that is not too expensive, but it does the job. That’s what I want from my life: Intimate, fun, and not too expensive. God bless Volkswagen.