It's been interesting, being trustee of my father's estate. There are papers to fill out and file and things to do, and because I am the way I am, I become clueless about halfway through the next one on the list, and as a result nothing gets done. Currently I'm relying on estate attorneys and financial advisers to tell me what each step is, and to wait patiently while it takes several tries to get me to do each one.
Interesting.
Interesting because it isn't rocket science. Some emotional / intellectual part of my brain just refuses to grasp it. I hate paperwork. I am not unable to do it. But I am not very organized either, and some part of me really does not want to be. To hell with it. So, one half-step at a time.
The emotional component is an outcome of seeing the whys and wherefores. I have been going through my father's stuff, mainly to reorganize it sufficiently to get it the hell out of my living room. He and his dad were pack rats, and while leafing through deeds from the 1800s and service orders from both world wars and employment applications from the 1920s and the 1950s and articles written and awards received and legal matters managed on behalf of other family members and on and on, I was struck by how well organized they were. My grandfather was a perfect clerk -- indeed, he was an accountant who rose in the ranks to become Contra Costa County's first Auditor and then first Administrator. My father was a research scientist who only lacked real fame (though he is known world-wide) because of his tendency to help other researchers with their work yet not get his name on the resultant papers. I now have the evidence they chose to keep for their own pleasure of their career successes.
Going through all that is profoundly depressing because, of course, I turn it all around and make it about me. As an engineer I need to be well-organized and focused, as my father and grandfather were. But I am neither, and have carried the knowledge I am neither ever since kindergarten. Obviously this means not that I am incapable, but that some foundational seed was never planted, and early failures in school (kindergarten on up, every year) convinced me at a visceral level that I was not meant to be organized, focused, or, indeed, successful. Of course I've managed to be semi-successful in spite of it, mainly because I'm smart and likeable; but the lessons my grandfather passed to his son stopped with him. I lived the consequences of that stoppage for many years before even realizing, when trying to raise my own sons, it was a factor; and have lived the consequences since then as I struggle to keep my so-called career. All of that frustration and confusion glares under a spotlight when I see the evidence of how relatively effortlessly my forebears managed similar procedural challenges given just a little bit of childhood encouragement and training.
(Dad left when I was four and never saw a need to assist me with school. He acknowledged this failure a few years ago. And yeah, plenty of people without fathers wind up happy and/or not whiny about it. All I can say is, everyone's different.)
So: Attitude against being organized implanted by resentment towards distant male forebears leads to piss-poor organization of said forebear's estate. Interesting all around. Thank goodness the IRS allows extensions: I honestly don't give a shit about Dad's 2011 tax return.
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3 comments:
"As an engineer I need to be well-organized and focused, as my father and grandfather were."
I take issue with this. As a scientist that would be required. As an engineer? Not required. Nice, sure. Make things a bit tidier, sure. But not required. Some of the most disorganized, unfocused engineers I have worked with have also been among the most successful when it came to utilizing their creative powers and brilliance -- and you have both, dearheart, of those things.
What you need to be as an engineer is well-herded.
That said, companies, esp. the type you 'n I work at, require their engineers to sort of self-direct, self-herd, as it were. For THAT you need to be well-organized and focused.
Meanwhile, this here herdswoman needs to get cracking on her own taxes, fuck sake. Too many tasty distractions of late.
I struggled, too. And my mother's estate was very simple, all in order. We'd done her taxes a month before she died, everything was POD (pay on death), there was a will and not much money, all neatly divided between me and my sister. I dragged and dragged and dragged my heels. And this is where I really understood I had ADD.
And other stuff too.
But it got done. Hang in.
I take issue as well. As an ADD-afflicted engineer, I never did respond well to herding. Still don't, particularly. It's not the task that irks but rather the mandate to do it.
That and, as Don says, the lack of interest innit.
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