Today wasn’t the most fun for me – I’ll spare you the details, but it involved working on taxes and hassle regarding a doctors visit/HRA/FSA/deductible/copay.

I’ve had these events on my calendar for a while and have been dreading them. Not because they are that bad really – I know my situation could be a lot worse, but I have a high sensitivity to impending hassle tasks. Specifically, tasks that require a high energy burn from me but no opportunity to win, only minimizing a loss.

Anyways, I had planned to be more careful with my mental state/energy throughout the day, because historically these tasks would just fry me mentally – complete drainage. It absolutely wasn’t fun, but I do think I had a bit of progress.

For one, I experienced pretty much the worst case scenario for the health insurance items, but I think I mentally handled it relatively well (at least for me). I consciously had prepared myself for the potential negative outcomes, and had earlier decided that I won’t fight questionable charges under $100 – it’s just not worth the mental energy for me.

I also was able to slip in some mindfulness during breaks in the action at the doctor’s office while dealing with this billing/insurance hassle – taking a big step back, remembering my perspective and priorities, and not letting my deep-seated hatred of hassle run rampant within my brain and completely drain my mental energy for the day.

Later in the day, for taxes, I was procrastinating, and that was draining me. So kind of as a test for getting myself to do things I don’t feel like doing, I took the first step and opened one of my relevant pieces of mail. And I guess it worked – I got done what I wanted to get done, even though while I was procrastinating it just seemed like a monumentally not fun task.

All in all, I burned a lot of energy today on low-gain tasks, but whatever. I’m happy that I was able to not have huge stress or burn catastrophic amounts of energy, and I think a lot of that was due to mental preparation and vigilance during the events (looking for garbage mental processes).