I wasn’t trying to start an argument.
That’s important.
People hear the word spreadsheet and immediately assume the worst. They picture someone colour-coding cells and assigning family members performance targets.
I wasn’t doing that.
At least not intentionally.
The trouble started on a Wednesday evening.
Sara was reading on the sofa.
The twins were upstairs arguing about something that would almost certainly be forgotten within twenty minutes.
Leo was in his room.
And I was at the dining table with my laptop open.
What began as a quick look at next month’s household expenses somehow evolved into four separate tabs, two calculators and a spreadsheet titled “Potential Savings Opportunities V3”.
The fact there had already been two previous versions should have been a warning sign.
The house was quiet.
Too quiet.
Anyone with children knows that silence is often more dangerous than noise.
I should have closed the laptop and walked away.
Instead I kept going.
Electricity usage.
Internet contracts.
Insurance renewals.
The running costs of the air conditioning.
One thing led to another and before long I was reading about battery systems and solar installation in Javea despite the fact we live in Ibiza and had no immediate plans to install anything. We can actually see Javea though on a clear day…
That sort of thing happens to me more often than I’d like to admit.
Sara appeared beside me holding a mug.
“Tea?”
“Thanks.”
She put the mug down and looked at the screen.
There was a long pause.
Not an angry pause.
Not even a disappointed pause.
Just the sort of pause that suggests someone is deciding whether the conversation is worth having.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving us money.”
She nodded slowly.
“At nine-thirty at night?”
“That’s when the best savings happen.”
I immediately regretted saying it.
Sara sat opposite me.
“You’ve been staring at that thing for two hours.”
“It hasn’t been two hours.”
“It has.”
I checked.
It had.
This was not helpful.
She pointed at the screen.
“What exactly am I looking at?”
I considered giving a detailed explanation.
The projected annual cost differences between three hypothetical scenarios involving energy consumption, inflation assumptions and appliance replacement schedules.
Then I remembered I enjoy sleeping indoors.
“It’s just a spreadsheet.”
She laughed.
Not a happy laugh.
The sort of laugh normally heard moments before someone tells you something true.
“Jon, every time life feels busy, you make another spreadsheet.”
“I do not.”
“You absolutely do.”
I started preparing a defence.
Then stopped.
Because she was right.
When the villa purchase was dragging on, I made spreadsheets.
When I was trying to quit smoking, I made spreadsheets.
When work got chaotic, I made spreadsheets.
Apparently my brain sees uncertainty and responds by opening Excel.
The strange thing is that the spreadsheet itself rarely solves anything.
It just gives me the feeling that I might be solving something.
There’s a difference.
I remembered writing about something similar in Half-Days, Full Plates: The Week I Swapped Smoke Breaks for Breathing Breaks.
Back then I was discovering that being busy and being productive weren’t always the same thing.
Some lessons need repeating.
Sara eventually returned to her book.
I closed the laptop.
For about seven minutes.
Then curiosity got the better of me and I opened it again.
Not the spreadsheet.
A different tab.
I wanted to check one figure.
Just one.
That’s when Leo appeared.
No idea how long he’d been standing there.
Teenagers have developed the ability to materialise silently from nowhere.
He looked at me.
Looked at the screen.
Looked back at me.
“Dad.”
“Yes?”
“Is this another one of your systems?”
I knew exactly what he meant.
Every few months I convince myself I’ve discovered a new system that will finally organise life.
A better calendar.
A new routine.
A planning app.
A notebook.
A spreadsheet.
A whiteboard.
Something.
The system changes.
The behaviour stays suspiciously similar.
“Maybe.”
He nodded.
“How many systems have there been now?”
“I don’t know.”
“More than ten?”
“Possibly.”
“Have any of them worked?”
That felt unnecessary.
He wandered off before I could answer.
The annoying thing was that he wasn’t being sarcastic.
He was genuinely curious.
And the answer, if I’m honest, is complicated.
Some of them worked for a while.
Some helped.
Some didn’t.
But maybe the bigger question is why I keep looking for systems in the first place.
The older I get, the more I suspect it has less to do with organisation and more to do with reassurance.
A spreadsheet is tidy.
Life isn’t.
A spreadsheet behaves predictably.
Children don’t.
Clients don’t.
Property purchases don’t.
Neither do health scares, travel plans, family problems or most of the things that actually matter.
The next morning I opened the file again.
I stared at it for a minute.
Then I deleted half the tabs.
Progress comes in many forms.
Sometimes it’s achieving a goal.
Sometimes it’s recognising you’re making things more complicated than they need to be.
I made a coffee.
Sat on the balcony.
And noticed Sara had moved my chair again.
Not by much.
Just enough.
Exactly like she did in Sara Moved My Balcony Chair and Pretended It Was Normal.
I left it where it was.
Which might be the biggest personal breakthrough of the entire week.