Lives, insured

2/16/10 A whole bunch of life insurance paperwork, recycled

Look at that kid. Don't you think his folks should have life insurance?

Joanna and I have been talking about getting life insurance for years, ever since we married. It's the responsible thing to do, we know that, and it should have happened long ago.

Well, it's finally happening, and I credit two powerful forces: my son Chase and Day 200 of the Downsizing Challenge.

I wanted to do something significant to mark the double-century mark of the challenge, and I realized that finally getting the ball rolling on life insurance was the way to do it. I've been shuffling life insurance paperwork for years, always saying to myself, "I'm going to get to that this weekend." And, I never did.

But, holding a little baby -- or, as I'm calling him today, The Eleven Pound Wonder -- in my hands certainly helps turn intention into action. And the 200th Day of the challenge only ensured that it would happen today rather than actually waiting for the weekend.

An hour and seventeen minutes on the phone later, and we have the process started. And, as they say, a great weight was lifted.

Plus, a whole folder of now-irrelevant paper has now been tossed into our recycling bin.

This kind of downsizing may be small on the physical scale but is absolutely huge on the psychological scale. Sometimes a few undealt-with papers can cause as much clutter in our lives as a half-ton of paving stones, a hundred random pieces of junk, or even a collapsed garage.

I'm often guilty of letting important stuff slide as I occupy myself with trivialities (Hello, internet!). Fortunately, those eleven pounds of Dyer-Payne DNA are helping me to get my priorities back in line.

Two hundred days down, one sixty-five left to go. Let's hope I make it out alive.