My latest column is up at Project Simplify…

The Not-So-Simple Life: Me Versus the Tree

by Lance Brown

In the wake of the devastating images and news coming out of Japan recently, I doubt anyone needs to be reminded that disaster can strike at any time.

Unlike most people, I didn’t have to wait for earthquakes and tsunamis to raise my disaster awareness this month. A couple of weeks ago, a major snowstorm in our area proved too much of a burden for a huge tree across the street from me, and it came crashing down onto my house in the early hours of the morning.

This may not be what they’re thinking of when people use the term “rude awakening”, but I can’t think of a better example. Taking out half my roof, and dumping most of my ceiling onto my floor (and onto my freaked-out cat)…that’s pretty rude. And very awakening.whuhuh

It was almost too dark to see anything when it first happened, and I had only been asleep for a couple hours, so at first I just stood in shock and tried to comprehend what I was seeing. And to figure out where my cat was.

Once the reality of what had happened became clear, the urge to be overwhelmed and freaked out was very strong. Very, very strong. I couldn’t even take a step around my house, I didn’t know where my cat was among all the rubble (or if he was OK), my house was now open to the sky in the middle of a once-in-a-generation snowstorm…and did I mention I had no power, no phone, no Internet, and my car was irretrievably snowed in?

In other words: DISASTER!!!

All of that zoomed up to the forefront of my mind within about a minute of my hazy awakening. (Re-enactment of that moment: “Huh, what was that? Ohhhhh…”)

I recognized right away (based on the racing of my heart, probably) that there was a serious potential to flip out over what was going on. At the same time, my past experiences with tough living told me that the situation was going to require all the resources I could marshal, with a pretty slim margin of error if I wanted to make sure my world got right again any time soon. My new disaster could very easily become a serious of disastrous days, and things still had a chance to get worse, if I failed to keep myself in a position to make them better.

So I made a decision in that moment,  even while I was still standing there staring around through the rubble, calling “Leo? Leo? Leo?!” in a daze of sleeplessness and shock. It had two parts:

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Read the rest at Project Simplify.