Incrementalism

Yes, I am thinking about politics here, but the example I am giving is not really political.

Having completed school now, while my main priority needs to be job hunting, there is also a lot of catching up to do on other things. 

Finishing up the last of school required time spent on details where I just had to put some things off. They were also important, but needed time I could not give them.

One of those was an issue with my mother's care costs. I had mentioned it earlier, but there was something that I thought I could help, if I could only get the right answer.

I got bounced around a lot on the phones trying to get that right answer. I decided the only remedy was to go down to the office, but I could not commit to that until yesterday.

There was not someone there at that time who could talk to me. They suggested I might have better luck on the phones, but I assured them that was not the case. We arranged for someone to call me later that day.

Now, part of someone being available at that time was a matter of expertise; this is someone who can give you the right answer. In fact, the person who called me was knowledgeable on the topic and I got the information that I needed.

I also learned that a lot of the information I had gotten previously was wrong. This whole part of the equation had been unnecessary, except that the actual process that I was supposed to have done back then was ridiculous. Maybe the reason so few people understand it is that they are trying to impose logic on a process where it can only fail. I've had that problem myself.

I was able to get it confirmed that the way things are set up now should not impose problems further down the road, but there are some other things that I need to look into where the correct source has not been helpful in the past.

This is still progress. I am ahead of where I was.

That's how it is for a lot of these things. This time you wait on hold. That time you leave a message. This time you do get a call back but the next time you don't and you have to start over.

I didn't go until Tuesday because I was trying to resolve three other things Monday. One was resolved and one is supposed to get me a callback, though two days later I am not optimistic about that one.

For the third I was locked out of a web site. Even though the person I was talking to told me I was not locked out, she eventually did agree that I was and got me in. However, it did not resolve one specific area of the system, and I needed to call on that today. 

That one, at least, is completely resolved now (and would not have been an issue if I had not had to change my phone number in the first place, but these things happen).

Yes, bureaucracy is a problem here, but it is a part of life that there are things that you can't get all done at once.

It requires patience and persistence -- sometimes more than the people who need it have -- but you just have to keep going, being glad for the progress that there is and keeping sight of the progress that is still needed.    

I will also acknowledge that part of this is due to my economic class (which may make it more political). 

People with more money never have to deal with a lot of this. There are some things about that which end up being pretty important.