Episode 7: How to Build a Family-Centered Life at Home & Around the World, Asking Big Questions with Maverick Family

Weirdschooling: Season One, Episode 7
Maverick Family
Originally Released October 11th, 2023

Intro: <Original bright piano sea shanty music rising in the background with school bell sound.>

Sarah: Welcome to Weirdschooling. I’m Sarah.

Jennie: And I’m Jennie. We’re parents, friends, lifelong learners and self-proclaimed weirdos.

Sarah: We’ve found that some of the best educational methods have emerged when we let go of conformity and explore the unconventional and unique.

Jennie: Because no one’s brain operates the same way and that’s exciting. And what works today may not work tomorrow, and we can adapt.

Sarah: We’re all in this weird and wonderful world together.

Jennie: So let’s learn outside the box!

<Original cheerful, organ and piano sea shanty music fading out in the background.>

Jennie: Today, we're going to be learning about the experience of Abigail and Jeremiah Maverick, who have traded in their six figure salary and the nine to five grind to have a life that's more focused on family and freedom. They're currently founding the Maverick family and they have 12 months to turn their dream into a sustainable lifestyle. And so today we're going to learn all about Abigail and Jeremiah and their journey that have brought them to this wonderfully weird educational and personal place.

Jeremiah: We are a family of four. Uh, we're pretty young parents, so we're both 32. We have a now 7- year-old and 9-year-old. We are hanging out in South Louisiana, sweating our butts off down here.
Ideally, we'll spend about three months here and three months traveling abroad with other families, which we're happy to share more about later. And, uh, yeah, we are, you know, living our, trying to live our best life and figure out how to make the most of this, um, short and beautiful and sweet season with our kids.

Abigail: So we met when we were 19. We met in college. Um, and we fell in love and we found ourselves married at 22. Um, and then less than a year later, we found ourselves pregnant. Uh, at that point, I was in graduate school. Jeremiah had just started working for a big accounting firm, and at the time we were, we're pretty traditional.
You know, I wanted to stay at home with my kids and, looking back now, I probably would have done it differently, but at the time it just made sense to drop out of grad school and, and stay home with our first. And around the time, about a month before our oldest was due, Jeremiah was actually let go from his accounting firm that he was working for. And so, like any logical humans at the time, it just was like, well, you know, he was let go because they said he didn't have enough experience, um, as an accountant. So we should Start our own accounting firm because we can do this. Jeremiah, you can do this. He really wanted to work from home. And he's like, I really, I really think we can do this.

Jeremiah: We were like uber traditional, like very, we did not set out to be interesting or weird or strange.
Like that wasn't anywhere on our sort of radar. I think though, but looking back now, like I was journaling, we were journaling together the other day and realizing, you know, we've taken a lot of really big leaps and changes that I think to outsiders, particularly our friends and family are like, that is really weird.
I'm not experienced enough to keep hold the job, but I am crazy enough to start a company doing the thing I wasn't experienced enough to keep a job in. And you know what? We found a way to make it work six months in. We like our savings ran out and we made our first month full month of income. And so anyways, I think that's like in a nutshell, kind of how we started like really traditional, but now we're like. We seem really weird.

Sarah: What drove that leap of faith to, to even look in the unconventional corner, where a lot of people, sure, they could have solved that problem, but they wouldn't have done it in such an interesting way.
Abigail: I think for one reason or another, the two of us together, We ask ourselves hard questions a lot. Like I said, I had dropped out of graduate school. I was home with two babies and I was just feeling very stuck and stifled.
I needed something needed to change. I was finding myself not growing. Just discontent and not happy. And so I started just a basic mindfulness gratitude practice of writing three things down every day that I was grateful for and within A short amount of time, I just started realizing how many options and opportunities we have. We traveled for about nine months, maybe 10.
And then we found ourselves lonely because we're extroverted. Both come from big families. So we found ourselves back in south Louisiana where everyone is and then COVID hit. towards the end of it. we're like, what if we traveled again? And we found a world schooling school in the Dominican Republic, which is where we met Jennie, actually. We showed up in the Dominican Republic, not knowing how to speak Spanish. so we were there for about three months and within the first few weeks, we were like, we can't live here. Like, there's no way this is going to work.
so it was just a rural town and. Just wasn't quite what we expected. So while Jennie was actually with us, we, Jeremiah and I were talking and I was like, man, if we were independently wealthy, we could just hire a teacher and travel the world and she could teach our kids and that would be it. And he was like, well.
Maybe we could, like, maybe we don't have to be independently wealthy. We could probably collectively hire someone. And so we approached a teacher we were like, if we can find you students that you need to support you while you traveled, would you travel with us?
And she said, yeah.

Jeremiah: Yeah, like 30 second rundown. So that was like the birth of the Traveling Circus is, is this idea, which kind of came out of like a COVID season where there are a lot of little independent, like pods were forming of, families, hiring teachers directly to teach.
You know, 10, 15 kids or whatever, it was basically an idea. It was like a, a co traveling pod. And I was like, that could be the best of a lot of worlds where it's like, you have friends to travel with. So you're not so lonely. You have a teacher to travel with. So you have like a creative education and you could.
Potentially work during the day and then by night, you can go out and explore the area and you're not stuck in one location because you don't, you're not, you're not tied to a physical building or school. So I was like, you know, we could have an education. We can have a community that's as mobile as we want to be.
It felt like this is an idea whose time has come. I have to believe there's seven or eight other families that would want to do something like that and we posted on a world school Facebook group And within like four weeks, we had like booked 10 students, including our two to travel the world with us. We went to Guatemala. We went to Ecuador and then Peru. And then, we went to Portugal, in Spain, and then we did Ireland. So it's been a whirlwind of like 18 months, but Again, it was just one of those, like, how could we, like, how can we get what we want?
how do we balance these things together and just be a little bit irrational? And it turns out there's a lot of irrational people out there in the world. So if you want to do something irrational, there's plenty of other people to do it with you.

Sarah: So how do you think that, um, as you now have a little bit of space and time to reflect back on that experience, what do you think the best things that that experience did for your kids and for your relationship as a family?

Abigail: World schooling is. It's so unique and I love history and my oldest was telling me this week how much he loves history and that's really the heart of world schooling from my perspective is just diving deep into other people's cultures and histories and what does normal life look like for them because that's another crazy thing is we're all doing our own thing in present day and everyone is doing that all over the world.
Where you wake up, you eat, you go to work, you do this, and it, we're all so similar, yet slightly different. And that has been something I've loved exposing my kids to at such a young age.

Jeremiah: Yeah, don't get, uh, my oldest, on, England and British history and how they oppress the Irish. That as soon as you bring anything up, you're like, those guys were the worst.
And he will just talk your head off for 10 minutes about how cruel the English were.

Jennie: Is the Traveling Circus. still going on? Are families still doing that? And what is the current state of that if listeners wanted to learn more about it?
And like you said, do something fun and irrational to broaden the horizons for their kids?

Abigail: Yes, the Traveling Circus is still going on. We have shifted from being a full time traveling school and community to being part time. We had a family we were traveling with who has spun off a full time traveling school and community because they didn't want to switch to part time and so If someone is interested in doing full time, even if it's a year or two or something, I believe opportunities will continue to pop up for that.
But right now, the Traveling Circus is part time.

Jennie: You've been going through all these evolutions, at what point did you decide, alright, it's time for part time?
And then... It's time for what we're doing now and, uh, take us through that a little bit.

Abigail: I think the boys, our two boys were communicating that they wanted a home and wanted a home base. And I wanted to honor that. Also, it just. resonated for me, this balance of rest and adventure, and I think that it's just built in all of us as humans, a need for security and then also a need for risk.

Jeremiah: I was feeling really, really disconnected. Instead of having eight hour work days, I want to have eight hour play days, you know, I think I want to flip this where the bulk of my day is getting to hang out with Abigail and the boys and our friends and family, what have you.
So in like the other four or five hours of the day, I want to do things that I am truly curious about and truly passionate about and aligned with. And I realized what are those things like for us right now? It's family. And then the part that I do work, I want to be solving my problems. And my problems right now are how to raise amazing kids, how to have a great marriage, how to, uh, you know, build a more aligned career, what have you. So that's kind of like the genesis of this transition where, At first they're like, there's no way we're going to do this. What the finances don't make sense. And then we like dug deep and we figured out a way to move some things, cut some things, take some savings out, get creative. And right now we have a 12 month runway to build a business around the things that we're most passionate about, which is lifestyle design, which is family.
And we don't have it all figured out. But we're getting started and we're already like breaking through a lot of barriers and mental barriers and that kind of stuff.
Abigail: And I also think that's why we're drawn to helping others design their dream family lifestyle we have paved this path. We like taking risks. We enjoy going out into the unknown and you can follow us.
If there are people out there who want to make a change, but either they're scared or they don't know what to do, they feel disempowered. That is something that we want to help bring to the world.

Jennie: How would you describe Maverick family?

Jeremiah: It's sort of like about putting a signal out into the world about a lifestyle, life is short. The season with our kids is even shorter. Our job with this project is sort of evangelize how precious this time is, how scarce this time is, and this is not a time to play it safe, and then like dive into, like, what does it mean to not play it safe?
What we're trying to do is really help create a shift in family lives.

Abigail: And helping people make that shift. Not like, oh, this is what your life should look like, and then just leaving them there. But these are actionable steps. and just kind of providing people with a framework on what they could use to intentionally
Jennie: If someone came to Family Maverick and said, I would like to spend more time with my family, I would like to maximize this precious time, but I can't leave my job and we have to stay in a traditional school setting.
How would you enter into a conversation or what would you offer someone like that?

Abigail: I would probably recommend that they just start spending more time with themselves and focusing on what is it that they want? Why? Why do they want it? Why are they here? What do they want for their kids?
Yeah, so I think I'd start I would start there.

Jeremiah: I want to, push back on your question and then answer your question. the first question you ask, like, I can't leave my job. Can you not? You know, like I can't leave my brick and mortar house. Can you not like I think asking that fundamental question is a really important place to start.
I'm not saying you have to, but I do think you should think about it going back to what Abigail was saying, like asking hard questions. everybody you're inspired by, they took some big leap, that's just like my, the first thing, but to actually, to, to like stay inside of those confines, I would look for double duty. Where can you do double duty in your life? Double duty is this idea where you can solve two problems with one solution.
Whole billion dollar businesses have been built on this concept like Airbnb, they help you make double duty of your house. It's a place for you to have a roof over your head, but you can also make some money on the side. Your spare bedroom can also be a spare hotel room kind of idea you can apply it in parenting.
We created a family project for ourselves. I'm like, you know what, how can I solve these two problems at the exact same time? I need things to do with my kids. I want to have more fun with them.
Why don't we set up a family project to fix our house, you know, and I have to like to play it up and, you know, add some flourishes. So it's interesting for them, but like we went to YouTube and we started deconstructing the project and we learned about composting and earthworms and they're getting education and we're making progress on our home projects all at the same time.
So like that, those types of opportunities are like all around you everywhere. It doesn't cost any money, but you can start squeezing out more time. More, value for your family, more memories, and you don't actually have to make a big change I asked myself this sort of double duty question of like, how could I get paid to solve my own problems, you know, and that's what ended up leading us to this, this path that we're on right now.
If I had to put in a little bit of a soundbite, I would say, look, for double duty in life, where can you solve two problems with one solution?

Sarah: Hmm. Love that in the realm of asking difficult questions. I almost didn't wanna ask this question.
But I think a lot of what Jennie and I really like doing is asking questions from the source. And you guys are the source here. What would you say to those folks who say, like, these are the choices of the privileged, these are the choices of people who have no systemic issues to contend with, they don't have systemic issues. sick family members. They don't have true economic issues that make it difficult for them or a line of work that they could do virtually.
Um, what would you say to those folks?

Jeremiah: I think that's a really, really important question. This is something I contended with when we traveled in the Dominican Republic. I think what I ended up taking away from that season is we all have this sort of window in our life. and not everybody's window has the exact same upper limit and lower limit, the window is sort of like, what's the worst case scenario in your life and what's best case scenario in your life.
Maverick family and sort of lifestyle design is, how do I identify what the upper bound of my window is? And how do I go for that? I, that's why I'm not like prescribing our lifestyle. You have to go and travel like we travel.
That's what it means to live a great life. It's like, no, that's what it means for us to move towards our upper bound. I don't know if I can apologize that my window is the way it is. I didn't pick my window in the same way that the people who grew up in the Dominican, they didn't pick their window, but you know what the upper bound of their window, there's still a lot of really good things going on in there.
Like the, one of the things that I got challenged with is in Dominican Republic community is everything. There's a sense of community and connection there that meets the, you know, some of the core needs of our human experience in a way that's way better than I would say the American life. It's like, think about your personal upper bound and how do you move towards that?

Jennie: If you're talking about limited resources, whether they're time or economic, I think that that idea of double duty is definitely helpful. And I think that, um, that makes sense.
So if someone did come to Family Maverick, or if someone is listening and, They're still at a place where it either logistically or mentally are not able to make huge leaps. that idea of thinking, what is the best? What is the worst case? Where am I on that spectrum? And what small things can I do to get to that place of better?
I think that that's manageable. And I also think that this whole conversation of weird schooling and the whole conversation of, The whole conversation of weird schooling is, what do you personally need? Like, that some people might call weird, you know, traveling the world, leaving your business, um, all of this stuff might feel weird.
Weird. But to Abigail's point, it's all about reflection. And this whole journey started with Abigail, sitting down and doing a gratitude journal and listing things that she needed in a very small and manageable way. And so I think that there are definitely, I'm hearing, access points for people. If it's just reflection, if it's vision building, if it's finding double duty.
I'd like to know how could listeners learn more about Family Mavericks, about Traveling Circus, and how could we follow along on your journey? Because I think just having people, um, who are pushing boundaries and living those upper  limits of their own, can be really inspiring.
So how can people follow along with you and learn more about what you're doing?

Abigail: We, you can find us both on Twitter under Abigail Maverick and Jeremiah Maverick.

Jeremiah: So I think a central place is our website, maverickfam. com. Uh, and we actually linked our socials from there. and we are going to be dropping a newsletter pretty soon. And, uh, hopefully we're going to get into podcasting pretty soon too. So we can take some of these like tou know, tableside chats and expand on them. Like, for example, we didn't even get into like, how are like, Abigail and I spend every day, 50, 50, like, uh, the schooling, the home, the housework, although I'm not sure she would say it's fully 50, 50, but that's like our ideal that we're like moving towards. So anyways, there's like a lot of stuff that we want to dig into on our own podcast, or if we, you know, have the project coming back here Uh, maverickfam. com I think is like the easiest, simplest place to go and then there'll be other stuff from there.

Jennie: I have another question too for you, Jeremiah. Um, not to speak in generalities, but I kind of have to and I think it's just true a lot of the voices we have in education and in the sphere of, like, raising up children are female, um, or are, are moms, and I'm interested to the point you mentioned, um, you guys have described doing 50 50 parenting, Jeremiah, Do you have any advice for partners who might want to increase the amount of contribution they have to education and family dynamics?

Jeremiah: For me, it was all mindset. I think two, two mindset shifts. One was, I am a little bit addicted to achievement. Like I love to solve problems and accomplish things in my career was that outlet for me, um, for the longest time, I got a lot of dopamine hits from, you know, sending out the emails, landing the sales, uh, running meetings, what have you.
And somewhere along the way, I started to realize that, if like I wanted to have a successful life, I needed to broaden my definition of success, like success, a successful life wasn't just having a successful career. Like at the end of my life, I think I would actually feel like a failure if I didn't make the most of this time with my family.
I ended up running across this idea of like the achievers dilemma. It comes from a guy named click. Clayton Christensen, who wrote a book, a business book that a lot of, uh, businessy minded partners a nutshell is just that successful companies end up going out of business because they're too focused on extracting profits today, and they don't have the foresight to see what's going to be successful tomorrow. So it's like they're getting they're focusing on present. Success and achievement and not long term success and achievement.
And he was saying, he notices the exact same pattern in families that a lot of the, very smart, successful people he went to college with that went on to have very grateful, great careers, five, 10, 15, 25 years later, they had really broken homes. And it's like, why do these successful people have such.
Failed personal lives. And what he was saying is he noticed the exact same pattern that successful people, they, they, they, they're sort of like this achievers dilemma that when they have a spare moment to think or do they, their mind goes to where they get the most sense of achievement and family often isn't that like you have to wait 20 years to see if your work paid off, whereas like sending the email gives you that dopamine hit making that sale.
And so what he was saying is like, you just fall into this trap where. Career gives you more mental rewards. And as a result, you give it an outsized amount of your time and attention. And so I had, I just had to make a shift in a mindset shift that I now I, I need to expand my definition of success. And now I, and I think to me, this is the second mindset shift is I want my family to become my number one creative.
And achievement based out like outlet, you know, like, like, and this is that double duty thing. It's like, instead of just saying achievement doesn't matter to me. Why don't I shift my achievement mindedness towards my family? How do I have a kick ass family? Like that's a really hard problem to solve, you know, like, and so now I feel like I'm starting to shift towards I'm getting my dopamine hits from working on this area of my life.
And I think Abigail can attest like I'm bringing a lot of that same businessy energy to this area of life. I think those are the two mindset shifts. It's like broadening the definition of success. Cause I don't want to fall into the achievers dilemma. And then I want to make my family the number one outlet for my creativity and achievement mindedness.
Sarah: I wish that I had this in front of me because I was thinking about this earlier when you were talking about how important it was, that you were, not just like an equal partner, but like a very present father.
I saw a bunch of studies actually that were, um, looking at fatherhood specifically and why the entry point. Being a more engaged parent is so difficult for many guys out there. And a lot of it was, typically, again, traditionally, females have filled that role for lots and lots of, lots of reasons.
We can get very boring into the sociological and economic and cultural stuff that, that relates to that. One of the things that you are talking about, I think, is something that the studies were sort of inferring, and that's that it is very difficult to straddle many roles and many realms, like the business realm, and the family realm, how do you just take the roles that all of us have, the multiple roles that we have in our lives, and turn them upside down?
Because it sounds like that's what a lot, what both of you have done, both of you have done in your lives.

Abigail: I think a key part of the story is it's been a slow journey. There's another quote that we say a lot is Ray Dalio is a, he's a business guy, but he said, When faced with the choice between two things that you need that are seemingly at odds, Go slowly to figure out how you can have as much of both as possible.
Because there's usually a path. that you just haven't figured out [00:23:00] yet. So look for it until you find it, rather than settling for the choice that is then apparent to you. Can you tell? I say that to myself every day. But, this journey of getting to a place that is 50-50, for me, I've been feeling like I've wanted this for years, right?
But it's, it's a slow It's a slow process and it's a slow evolution to begin to reshape. Our programming and mine included as in like I think a big thing that I have had to work through and I'm still working through is my definition of success when it comes to housekeeping.

Sarah: When listeners listen to your family's experience and, I hate to use the word bravery, but I can't think of another word, but your bravery to really evaluate and do the hard thinking that you have done.
I think even that is really difficult. I think that would scare a lot of people away, but you did it anyway. To really sit down and think, like, what do we want? Like, where are we going? You know, are we happy? No, we're not. Like, why, why do we have to be unhappy? And then make the giant leap to figuring out a way to find a path that was right for your family. I'm just dying to hear what has been weird for you this week.

Abigail: I, I think this counts as a weird of the week, I brought my two boys to their first circus with my mom, and they hooted and hollered and screamed and had a blast so loudly Compared to all of the other families nearby that I, I literally laughed the entire circus at my two children because they were just in love with everything.
And mind you, before it started, my oldest had decided he's interested in looking into animal activism because of how animals are treated at the circus. I was disturbed throughout most of the circus.  But I have to say, when the lights went dark, he forgot about his animal activism and was just like in the moment and enjoying this mediocre circus like no one I have ever seen.
And I was just reminded how like my kids are My greatest teachers and like living in the moment and just loving life. And they just brought me into the present moment at that little silly circus in a small town in South Louisiana.

Jeremiah: That was incredible. I hadn't heard you say it that way.
I really appreciated that. My Weird of the Week is way more humble. We learned in our, um, gardening project this week that there's not just one type of compost. There's something called hot compost and cold compost. I'm probably going to butcher this, but I learned that hot compost has a lot of nitrogen, I think.
And that, that's why you don't want to put it directly on plants, but we have bunnies and we have house bunnies and these house bunnies apparently poop out black gold is what they call it. Their little bunny poop is like, is gold to like farmers and organic farmers and that kind of stuff. So we might actually like sell our own bunny poop.

Jennie: Double duty.

Jeremiah: That's our weird of the week is learning how composting and realizing our little bunnies are. Yeah, that is perfect. That's what I'm going to call it.

Jennie: That's it. Double doody. That's your company.

Sarah: Double doody.

Jeremiah: That's great. Thank you, Jennie. You're a branding genius. Thank you.

Sarah: Oh my God. I just have to interrupt really fast just to tell you a poo related thing.
I worked at a zoo and we actually sold zoo poo. We would literally collect all of the animal waste, and, um, there were certain processes and things that we had to do, and then people from the community would come and spend like five bucks or whatever, I don't remember the unit that it was, and we would make like hundreds of thousands of dollars from selling poop.
So, I feel like this could be a real venture.

Jeremiah: Thanks, yeah, no, I, I, uh, I'm definitely, I'm, this is my next double duty in my life. This is it.

Sarah: So last night, um, we, as a family, we all went to go see the Pink concert.
Um, I really like Pink. I just love her vibe, um, and we as a family, like, really try to see a lot of live music together. Um, my kids are 15 and 9, and, but we've been doing it since my oldest was probably like 7 or... six, six or seven. Seeing concerts together is so fun. But what was hilarious was we walk into this amphitheater, we're looking around, literally everyone around us is wearing some sort of pink.
And my poor son is not, he's not a pink wearing gentleman. We also, I said, honey, can you believe this? Look at all the pink and he was like, no, I was looking around and noticing that I am the only teenage boy here out of hundreds of thousands of people. And I'm like, you know what? You are. And so like, we weren't even paying attention for like the first hour of like the pre act stuff because we were looking to see, are there any other teenage boys here?
And no, no, there were not. Not a single one that we saw. But it was a great concert, a great night. We had a lot of laughs and, seeing, um, seeing just such a powerful performer together was just, it was great. It was great.

Jennie: Okay. This is, this is a super, this is really a lame weird of the week, but it was a learning moment. It was one of those self reflective moments where I realized my own deficits. So I was creating buttons. To give out as part of promotional material for our other podcast, Screen Cares, that had funny little quotes from some of our episodes.
And I was designing them all so carefully online and paying great attention to detail. And I had QR codes you could scan to like bring up the episodes and we're going to give them out at a film festival we're going to. Or depending on when this airs that we will have gone to. And I. I ordered them and my plan had been that they would be, you know, like dollar piece size that you could put on your lanyard or your jacket and it would be super cute to wear.
And I knew that I selected 3 inch by 3 inch because that was all that would work for the QR code. Like if it was too small, it just wouldn't work. And so I get the box of buttons in the mail and I just learned, I don't know what three inches by three inches looks like until I see it in my face, in my hand.
Three inches by three inches is like the full on size of your palm. Like it is bigger than a hello, my name is button. And so I now have a hundred. Buttons that are like gigantic zombie birds and gigantic donkeys with, um, bloody fingers from Banshees of Nesheeran that, like, no one will ever wear on their person, but, like, it could work on a backpack.
It could work. It's still gonna be fine. But, like, I don't understand.

Jeremiah: You should rebrand those to, uh, breastplates instead of buttons.

Jennie: That's really what it is, but I, I opened the box and I just laughed at myself, like, wow, we have some spatial, um, deficits here on. They look darn good though.

Sarah: They really are really cool.

Jennie: They're very cool. They look so good. I can't wait to give them out, but like, I'm going to be using two hands to give them to people.

Oh my gosh, this has been such a delight talking to you all and hearing about your partnership and just really all of your adventures and how they can inspire others to reflect on their lives and, and, and live on those upper bounds of what's possible for you in your life with Family Maverick and Traveling Circus and Abigail and Jeremiah.
Thank you so much for being on Weird Schooling today.

Jeremiah: Thank you. Loved it.

Abigail: Yeah, we love being here. Thank you.


Sarah: Weirdschooling is a My Kind of Weird Productions podcast and is co-created by hosts Sarah Woolverton-Mohler and Jennie Ziverk Carr with music by Brooks Milgate.


Jennie: You, your ideas and feedback MATTER, so like, subscribe and leave a review! Share your weirdschooling experiences or challenges on our social media channels at instagram, facebook, or our website at www.weirdschooling.com.


Sarah: We’re here for you– so feel free to join our engaging Weirdschooling Community Facebook group for inclusive, open-hearted idea sharing and camaraderie.


Jennie: You’re dismissed to go be the weirdest brick in the wall of this wonderful world!


<Original bright, organ and piano sea shanty music fading in the background with school bell sound.>