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One of the surest ways to get mired down in being un-homed is to start lagging on your important needs. It’s like the Natatorium itself: the longer you wait to make any decision or take action becomes exactly proportional to how much more things will fall into disrepair before you do. Then you’ve got a whole new level of unpleasantness to handle. The attrition rate on one’s confidence and capacity gets pretty high.

I’m not a good paperwork person. I often put it off too long working on other things. I’m good at seeing broad spectrum issues and finding solutions, contingencies, even creating possibilities. If I have a good detail person to collaborate with it’s so much better. So imagine my dismay when my stacks of paperwork in the van got knocked over. What little there was of organization is now an utter mess. It includes tax stuff, volunteer work for a non-profit, poetry I’ve written, and heaven only knows what else.

The problem before was trying to catch up. Now it’s got to be re-organized again. I can feel the anxiety at the end of each day as I check with my mental and physical energy levels. If I feel too low from providing healing work to patients then I focus on restorative things first. Often that’s all that I get to do before passing out for the evening. So the pressure is pushed off to the next day cycle. I’m sure many of you can imagine how too many cycles add up pretty quickly.

At times I regret not having more capacity. But then again it is what it is, and if nothing else lots of contemplative meditation on that keeps me from becoming un-hinged. Small moments taking a deep breath actually become huge elements for survival.

So for now I just hope I can pull myself and my stack of papers together in time for taxes. That and I hope to pay the taxes. Good luck to us all.

Previous posts in this series:

• Small Measures of Success
• The Interior Life
• I Miss My Bed
• My Closet Has a Flat Tire
• Hopes and Dreams
• Homeless Are People, Too
• Full Monty or Not?
• Back Seat Office
• Staying Connected
• Those Small Indignities
• Putting Your Life in Storage
• One Step Forward, One Step Back
• Exciting New Career Opportunities
• End of the Day
• Solutions Wanted
• When to Hold On, Let Go?
• Location, location, location
• Range of Motion
• Food More Than Sustenance
• Figuring It All Out Someday
• Solitude
• The Good, The Bad
• From The Heart
• Does Anyone Really See Me?
• Keeping Perspective
• Showers at the Natatorium
• Achieving Homelessness