The Tumbleweed

The Tumbleweed. It’s not really paperwork. It’s documents and signatures and mixed up sorting outs. It’s a single hospice invoice that includes charges from the past play year (covered deductible) and current plan year (uncovered deductible), with the plan year close to but not aligning with calendar year. It’s a reminder from Subaru that there is a recall to the electrical system that can be updated at the next ( but very late) service check. It’s a bank missing the boat (and therefore deadlines) on creating a trust account, requiring too many resolution phone calls up the chain. It’s all of the subscriptions to cancel and fresh looking at decisions about media packages now that there are alternatives to cable. It’s the calendar and practices and summer camps and permissions slips. It’s the $10 that I forgot to donate to the coach’s fund for one of the teams last spring that still is on my mind.

This melee of accounts and contracts and bills and agreements has always been there; our Tumbleweed just happens to be six (eight?) months in the hole. As I dig our way out of it, I’m seeing the Tumbleweed in its full mass rather than the daily dribble that I saw it as before. Reflections on the Tumbleweed:

  1. The Tumbleweed is an embodiment of the frog in the pot analogy. I never intentionally set my life up to be complex, but here we are. Some of the tumult is the way of the world, but some of it is also me (our family) choosing too much. I chose sticks and ended up with a Tumbleweed.

  2. The Tumbleweed includes lots of important things that require some expertise to sort out - warranties, cars, financial planning, comparative de-bundled pricing. Spreadsheets with integrated tabs, email and text threads to make it all work. What a crazy thing we expect of ourselves to be able to do it all. Just because we can doesn’t mean we should.

  3. I think that the juggling and place holding in my brain by the Tumbleweed significantly tugs on my ability to be present. It rolls into my quiet moments and competes for attention during business ones; sometimes the Tumbleweed wakes me up at night.

  4. No wonder people are mad, or tired, or overwhelmed. Even when everything was going great, the Tumbleweed could still make me feel tired and spent.

  5. I don’t really want to give up my smart phone (and the Sudoku I play on it). I like my series on Netflix, and I enjoy connecting with people so easily through technology. I don’t think I’m the chick to go off the grid and start farming my own bean sprouts.

With these facts at hand, I’m wondering if there is another way. I'd like to be able to lasso the Tumbleweed, to deal with that rat on my own schedule. I’d like to figure out what to outsource, where to seek expertise, and what to tame on my own.

I’ve looked love and loss in the eye without a flinch. The deepest cavern has not undone me. Surely, I can tame this Tumbleweed bitch.

Stay tuned. Strategies welcome.

Peace, y’all.

Nancy Wise7 Comments