My boyfriend and I have been on a mission. Every day, during our morning and evening walks with our spoiled geriatric wonder-dog Poppa, we stop to pull baby tumbleweeds. We’re currently targeting a half-mile radius around our house. The neighbors who see us on their “Ring” or other home security devices must think we’re nuts. We’re unofficially the strange couple with the giant dog who stop to pull random weeds and pick up trash.
Tumbleweeds are sneaky. They start off as a tiny grassy, purple-green sprout in the ground that is barely noticeable. As the plant grows, it looks like any other weed that you try to delay pulling or ignore due to a busy schedule. Eventually, it grows into this giant, thorny monstrosity that dries out and spreads its seeds by severing at the root when dry, rolling around, scratching cars, and blocking driveways. The bigger it grows, the harder the plant is to uproot because of the thorns that form. The giant spiky spheres of mayhem may seem like no big deal in an empty desert, but they’re quite the nuisance in the suburbs. They are a nuisance and when they roll into groups, they can even represent serious fire danger.
I currently live in a newer development of homes, which popped up from once empty lots of former agricultural land, primarily rice fields. After many years of being left fallow, the lots sat empty, except that they were filled with and surrounded by fields of weeds, and many tumbleweeds. During this past windy, wet winter, there were many days where the wind blew tumbleweeds bigger than me into driveways and sidewalks. In the spring I found evidence of their travels through baby weeds that sprouted from the ground. I barely noticed them or knew what they were until my boyfriend pointed them out. I knew what we had to do. Could we just ignore the weeds and hope that the neighbors would pull their respective allotment before it’s too late? I doubted it, seeing the dozens of less threatening but just as unsightly weeds spread across most yards. We knew that if we did nothing about it, these small sprouts would eventually grow up to spread their seeds and that the problem will propagate itself for years to come.
These annoying weeds remind me of the small but endless list of tasks that I let brew just below the surface of my life. I think that many of us can relate to this, as our days stretch on to weeks and then months. I use an app called “Todoist”, which helps me organize my life into daily tasks and have fallen into the habit of deferring tasks for future dates. These small tasks add up until they can no longer go unaddressed and pop up at inconvenient times. I finally noticed a task that I kept deferring for the past 2 years! This task could have major financial implications in the future if left alone, and the time I let pass has made it harder to address. Making a list and knowing what I need to do isn’t enough–taking action is what counts. If we take the time to take care of small actions now, it can have a big impact on preventing them from turning into larger problems later. This lesson of deferred action has taught me the importance of taking care of things when they’re still manageable and dividing seemingly large items into smaller parts so they are easily accomplished.
Is there something that you’ve been putting off? What can you do to take care of it now?
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