Setbacks...

Yesterday I was happy to have limited my weekly grocery purchases to less than $32. (I am trying to use up my remaining excess food before it goes stale.) I bought fresh herbs and vegetables, balsamic vinegar, cheese, buttermilk and a small quantity of beef.

Over the past few weeks, I had thrown out gallons of out-of-date salad dressings and condiments, so I had resolved to create small quantities of fresh dressings and marinades in the future, rather than buying prepared dressings and marinades. As one person, I just don't go through that much of the prepared stuff.

As soon as I arrived home, I started preparing a fresh salad and a pasta, meat and cheese dish. My dinner was looking good. But then it all went wrong. 

As usual, I had absentmindedly left open one of my cupboards -- the high one over my oven. I grabbed a step stool to retrieve a salad spinner from the top shelf. As I straightened up on the stool -- crack! -- my skull whacked the bottom of the open cupboard door. Oowww! Soon I was using towel after towel to soak up the blood flowing from the fresh inch-long gash on my head.

Of course, I couldn't see the gash to tell how superficial or deep it was, but I was sufficiently concerned about the injury to decide to sit down for a while.  I quickly finished heating a less-intricate version of the pasta dish and sat down to eat it. I stored the would-be salad in the fridge. 

A couple of hours later, my friends at flute choir told me that the wound was crusting over. They advised me to leave it alone. I was relieved -- it would have been a real irritation to have to go to the emergency room to get stitches. The gash hurt a little, but not a lot.

Tonight, however, I was feeling okay, so I finished making the dinner I started last night and washed my dishes from both meals. The meal tonight was good, and I enjoyed it -- although I am still picking away at the salad as I write this. The buttermilk dressing needs to marinate longer.

The taxman cometh...

I am two years behind in my tax filings. I probably don't owe much, since I haven't worked in the last two years, but I have been too distracted/immobilized by issues to get all my documents together.  My accountant is aware of my mental health issues and has been in contact with the government tax officials to notify them what is happening.

My priority assignment for several weeks -- and months -- has been to finish collecting my financial documents for my accountant. I have been working on this task for the last three years, but most of the time, I have been unable to deal with the task. Piles of mixed up papers cause me GREAT DISTRESS.  In the past, I have hired people to help me face my papers, but I didn't feel that I could do this with my current unemployment. 

Trying to sort my computer parts a couple of months ago started out as a way of avoiding going through my stacks of papers, which harbour my tax documents. Making decisions about computer parts is much easier than making decisions about paper. I have no emotional blocks in dealing with the computer parts.

I hoard information and paper

As a compulsive researcher and hoarder of information, I have way too much paper in my house at any time. Add in my problems with distraction, and both important and worthless papers are quickly scrambled together in an unfathomable mess. To sort them, I must make decisions about what to do with each piece of paper -- and I quickly get lost in the forest of detail.

Unlike some hoarders, I can recycle worthless bits of paper. I often fill my recycling bin with discarded paper. But I also often feel completely overwhelmed when sorting through and dealing with the important papers. Being a detail person, I get lost in the detail. Informational papers, personal papers, music, and financial papers all get scrambled together.

To reduce my paper use, I have tried to make electronic PDFs of many documents that I previously would have printed out. However, I have the same problem with PDFs as I do with physical items that are out of my sight: Out of sight, out of mind.

The worsening of my issues

I have felt my anxiety and depression worsening over the past two years. Two years ago,  I left a job that had become a bad fit to return to school to study digital media. I finished the course, dealt with some minor but irritating physical issues and then tried to re-enter the job market. 

I am intelligent, well-educated and have good skills, but, at 61, I don't seem to appeal to potential employers as I once did. I never expected to be unemployed at this point in my life. I am currently very worried about my financial future. That anxiety has fuelled my compulsive acquisition of books, software, courses, cameras and hardware that I hope might help me find a job. 

When will I be gotWhen will I be good enough to get a job? When will I have the right combination of assets it takes to find employment? Some would say that I should quit battering myself on these points. I feel guilt and shame that I have been unable to translate my up-to-date skills into paid employment. And to top that off, I have been busying myself with volunteer work to the point of craziness. And the volunteer work often isn't even appreciated, leading to more stress.

Crippling indecision...

In dealing with this stress, I am now having a great deal of difficulty making decisions about ANYTHING. Tom, one of the mental health professionals helping me, says that it is to be expected that my current decluttering efforts would bring up feelings of unresolved grief. After all, hoarding is often a response to grief, as I have mentioned previously.

Tom and I discussed the feelings my cleanup effort had brought to the surface. I talked about the anxiety I feel about my various commitments to myself and others. Tom listed these -- eight in total -- and asked me to prioritize them. Then he had me weight them by allocating a total of 25 points between the eight commitments. To my surprise, I assigned the bulk of the points to three of the commitments and none to the bottom three.

My top concern was collecting my tax documents for my accountant.

A plan for dealing with the financial documents

Tom suggested that we use this weighting of priorities in creating a plan of attack for getting past my current roadblock with the financial documents. Together we brainstormed about the problem and came up with this action plan:

1. Go through the remaining few unexamined piles of papers to remove all bank statements, pharmacy receipts, and hardware and software receipts. (Ignore all other papers for now.)
2. Mark deductible receipts on my bank statements and invoices.
3. Make a spreadsheet listing all of these expenses by type and year.
4. Sort the physical invoices into folders by year.
5. Deliver the information to my accountant.

I'll let you know how this plan goes.