Taking Control

by James M. Jackson

This is a confession and affirmation, not a political rant. But politics greased my slippery slope, so if you are sick of anything political, skip now to the comments and tell me something good about your day today.

I have been off my game for nearly a year, and I have only myself to blame. Oh, I could be like many of our current leaders and point fingers in this direction and that: To Republicans for choosing a candidate whose personal behavior and hateful statements go against so many of the moral values I believe in. To Democrats for treating the electorate as if their candidate had a divine right to inhabit the Oval Office. To people on the right and left using ad hominem attacks instead of engaging in discussions based on a complete set of facts (and not using cherry-picked sets of words to imply a different meaning from the one actually conveyed). I could do that, and yet I would be wrong.

The only piece of that narrative I can control is choosing how I react to these and similar events.

In July and August and September and October I fussed and fumed and spent inordinate amounts of time keeping track of the political news and fake news and non-news as it was shouted and pontificated by everyone, everywhere. I read news articles and blogs and watched far too much television relating to the election. I checked my online news feeds multiple times a day.

When I hit a spot in my writing where I wasn’t sure what I wanted to say or whether the verb I had used was the best choice, I’d slip away and check the latest news or deal with the few emails that had come in since the last time I checked.

Seven months after the election, I’m still easily distracted and spending way too much time keeping track of political news and fake news and non-news, still checking online news feeds multiple times a day.

Well, enough of that! I declared June 1 the beginning of Take Back Jim’s Life. I know, how lame is it to label the regaining of one’s own life? But, we all know an effective advertising campaign can do wonders for sales. And changing one’s behavior is a personal sales job.

So be warned, siren song of news headlines: you’ll only have a chance to catch me once in the morning and maybe again at night. I’m sure my email program will miss our constant interactions, but it will get used to receiving my attention only before or after I start a project. I’ve already blocked politics from my Facebook feed (although it’s not a perfect filter).

These are all little steps, for sure, but they are all addressing my desire to regain a state of living deliberately, of taking control of those things I can, and letting go of those things I can’t control.

Thanks for allowing me to share my confession of losing my way and my first step to taking control.

Simplify

By James M Jackson

As we approach the coming equinox, thoughts turn to spring cleaning. It’s a tradition, is it not: spring cleaning? Not my tradition, mind you. My seasonal thoughts turn to spring peepers and leaves popping on trees and migrating birds, many freshly attired to attract a mate, and <groan> income taxes. I don’t notice the dirt I’ve tracked into the house until it’s pointed out to me. Nor do I notice overfilled closets, file cabinets, or newsletter mailing lists until there is no room for the addition I want to make.

With that introduction, you’ll not be surprised to learn I am a packrat. Aphorisms I grew up with and still repeat include, “Waste not, want not,” and “You never know when you might need it.” It’s a family tradition. When my father died, I “inherited” a ton (figuratively and probably literally) of family papers and such—mainly because I was the child with room to store all the material. I remember hearing about my grandmother joking to my father when my grandparents transferred the papers to him as part of their downsizing, “From our attic to yours.” I assume my children know what that means for their future.

I recognize this proclivity of mine. I often joked that I kept buying bigger (or more) houses because I needed more room to store books. A couple of years ago, I instituted a new practice regarding my personal library. For every new physical book I buy, one must find a new home. Down south, our church’s youth have a book sale to support their going to the denomination’s summer camp. Up north, we donate books to one of the local libraries. I look at it as giving someone else the opportunity of reading words I will not read again (at least in this lifetime). Electronic books are exempt from the physical storage constraint.

The digital age creates both opportunities to eliminate much of the physical records I keep and an almost limitless opportunity to keep more stuff that no one will ever use. For example, I kept in a file cabinet copies of all my tax returns—the earliest was while I was in high school! Legally, it makes sense to keep the most recent seven years; I filed the remainder because you never know who might be interested. Wouldn’t it be cool to see your grandparent’s or even great-grandparents’ taxes? Or my parents’ taxes the year I was born. (Back when we really were making American great again by investing in education and infrastructure. The highest marginal Federal personal income tax rate was 91%, although my parents’ marginal rate was probably only 22%).

So, I converted my historic tax returns to PDFs and stored them on an external hard drive. Now, if someone wants to know how much I made as a camp counselor in 1969, the answer is still available! That project emptied an entire cabinet drawer. And sometime in the future when my children look at a directory of that hard drive, they can clean the whole thing with one command. So easy.

Photographs are something else again. When film and processing cost serious dollars (at least for my budget at the time), I was parsimonious with my picture-taking. With digital cameras, I’ll shoot multiple frames—you never know which shot will be the keeper. This leads to resource problems. I need to spend time going through all the pictures to determine which are best. But can I delete ALL the others?

Are you kidding? This is me, we’re talking about. Sure, I delete the out-of-focus shots and the ones with someone’s elbow taking up half the frame. But the others? Well, you never know when . . . But I haven’t the time or interest in labeling the thousands of photos I electronically keep, so who am I really kidding here about the usefulness of the thousands of stored images. And yet, you never know . . . Not all that long ago one of my WWK blog mates wanted to use a picture of a house finch to illustrate her blog. Of course I had some to share. It’s that random variable positive reinforcement that feeds my hoarding addiction.

So with that as background, you may be surprised that I recently removed about 30% of the names from my author newsletter mailing list. I use MailChimp, which is free for me, provided my list includes fewer than 2,000 addresses. I was about to add another 100+ names gleaned from a contest, which would put me over 2,000. Faced with the choice of paying to email my newsletters or making room in that virtual closet, I made room.

I figured that the chances of someone who had not opened any of my last five newsletters would suddenly become a rabid fan were dismally small. Turns out using that criterion produced almost 600 email addresses. I admit when I saw how large the number was, I hesitated before pulling the trigger and assigning those 600 people to the terrible fate of not giving them the choice to ignore my newsletter for another year.

[There is room in my newsletter if you want to sign up. Here’s a link.]

I used to have a sign in my office that said, SIMPLIFY. It was meant as reminder that if I did not actively simplify, I would fall into the trap of spending inordinate time and energy managing my complications. I know I kept that sign someplace, because you just never know when it would be useful again. Oh wait, I just did a search of my computer’s hard drive and in two seconds it gave me the link to a PowerPoint file titled “Simplify.” See, you just never know . . . 

Financial Abuse of the Elderly

I (Jim) have been working on two short stories this month. Although the stories are very different, they share two similarities. Both involve my series character Seamus McCree and crimes against the elderly or mentally diminished.

Fellow WWK blogger Tina Whittle and I are writing one of the stories together. That one is for an anthology expected to be titled 50 Shades of Cabernet. The co-authoring thing is a new experience for me, and I am enjoying it. (I hope Tina is, too.) The second story is my planned submission to the fourth Guppy Chapter of Sisters in Crime anthology titled Fish Out of Water.

This need of mine to write about financial abuse of the elderly is not new. Perhaps it stems from my current responsibility to handle my mother’s finances, and I am more aware of the potential. Maybe it’s because I write about financial crimes. Criminals always follow the money, and today’s retirees as a group have a lot of money. Maybe it’s because news articles have suggested the way we now treat elder abuse is similar to the way we used to treat child abuse: severely underreporting the extent of the crime, blaming victims, allowing institutional practices to remain unchallenged. Whoa! That’s a charge.

Consider these facts:

Much as child abuse often happens within the family, according to AARP, nearly 60 percent of the Adult Protective Services cases of financial abuse nationwide involved an adult child of the elderly person.[1] According to a study sponsored by the Journal of Internal Medicine, friends and neighbors account for another 17%, and paid home aids 15%.[2] In this study, only 10% of the reported cases are perpetrated by strangers.

We don’t know for sure what percentage of total financial abuse is reported. Victims are often unaware. When they do realize they are victims, they are often too embarrassed to report the crime. Sometimes they are afraid to report the crime, fearing physical or psychological abuse from the perpetrator. Those suffering from dementia, depression, or disabilities are most at risk.

Sometimes the abuse is hard to catch, taking the form of “loans” that are never repaid, cheating not only the victim, but others who should have shared in the estate. Often the crime is simple theft, extracting money from an ATM, writing checks to themselves, buying stuff with the victim’s credit cards.

Taking a few simple steps can make it more difficult for perpetrators of elder financial fraud.

(1) As early as possible make sure you (and your parents, if alive) have an estate plan in place, including a will (and/or living trust) and health directives. Discuss your wishes with family so everyone knows what is to happen if you can’t take care of yourself in the future. This may be an uncomfortable conversation with your loved ones, but bright sunshine on your finances helps makes it harder for the mold of later abuse to take hold.

(2) Be wary when “new best friends” enter the life of a loved one. Any hint of “sharing” finances or the new friend “taking care” of finances should shoot off rockets of concern.

(3) Institute checks and balances wherever possible. Only a small percentage of lawyers and financial advisors are crooks, but alarm bells should go off if your lawyer recommends a financial advisor or vice versa. Independently verify referrals. Conversely, you may be able to use a lawyer or financial advisor as a resource to help prevent financial fraud.

(4) Use technology to help monitor spending. Credit card companies provide transaction alerts, which can provide early warning of a stolen number. If you worry about a relative who is still independent but potentially at risk, you can purchase monitoring services to spot unusual activity. An example is EverSafe.[3] (I mention them only as an example of what can be purchased. I have not used them and have no personal knowledge of how well they perform.)

(5) If one family member is responsible for a parent’s assets, make sure a second person has the ability to review transactions, asset statements, etc. I use DropBox to store my mother’s credit card, bank and mutual fund statements so one of my sisters can look over my shoulder. This protects Mom and also allows my sister to easily take over if something happens to me.

(6) If anything seems suspicious, ASK QUESTIONS.

Is financial crime against the elderly a concern for you, either for yourself or a relative? What have you done about minimizing risk of abuse?

~ Jim

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[1] http://www.westernjournalism.com/elder-financial-abuse-near/

[2] http://www.springer.com/gp/about-springer/media/springer-select/older-adults-are-at-risk-of-financial-abuse/30696

[3] https://www.eversafe.com/

The Kindness of Strangers

Dateline 7 July 2014: Early morning, Hampton Inn, Utica, New York.

The camera case with wanderlust

I had planned to upload my photos from the day before to my computer, choose one for my daily Facebook post celebrating the road trip we were on—and the camera was not where I expected it to be. I checked the room without success. I thought about when I had last used it (taking a picture of the bridge over the Hudson River we’d crossed) and what I had done with the camera (zipped it into a soft case, which I’d shoved into an outside pouch on my knapsack).

Conclusion: when I brought the knapsack inside the motel the previous night, I must have tipped the camera case out.

I checked outside around the car. I checked under the car. I checked inside the car. I rechecked the hotel room. Nada.

With the almost certain knowledge I had lost my small camera (I still had the big one safely stored in a camera backpack) I trooped down to the hotel front desk and enquired whether anyone turned in a lost camera. Indeed someone had, and once I told the clerk the make of the camera, it and I were reunited.

All because of the kindness of a stranger.

Normally when I use this camera, I attach its case to my belt. Normally does not mean always, and on this road trip I had misplaced my small camera once before. That time I laid it down next to me on the boat trip to visit the Northern Gannet colony on Bonaventure Island, which is off the coast of the Gaspé Peninsula in Quebec. When I got up, I didn’t check around me.

A younger man saw me leave the camera and brought it to me. Again, the kindness of a stranger. I was able to personally thank that young man, but only through this blog can I thank the person who found and turned in my camera in Utica.

Although my camera loss and recovery occurred during summer, for reasons not clear to me, that experience got me thinking about an act of kindness I received during winter. Six miles from home and about three miles from the nearest habitation, I skidded off the road with sufficient speed that I crested the snowbank. Two of my wheels retained contact with the snow. The other two were up in the air. When I tried to back out (four-wheel drive can solve anything, right?), I proceeded to spin the wheels and turtle my Ford Expedition so that none of the wheels had traction. A logging truck passed by. The driver saw me shoveling the snow from under my vehicle to attempt to regain traction. He backed up and, using my chain, pulled me out of the snowbank.

Innumerable strangers have given me directions over the years. Some of them have physically led me to where I needed to go because the directions were complicated.

In an act of kindness with long-term career effects, a professor on the Boston University selection MBA selection committee convinced the rest of the committee to ignore a technicality that would have voided my application. Without his intervention I would not have been able to go back to BU and complete my MBA. As it turned out, I later took a course taught by this professor. He recognized my name and told me the story.

I could go on (and on), but instead, I’d be interesting in hearing your stories about how a stranger’s kindness helped you.

~ Jim