(Pandemic Diary - day 134)

From my journal: 10 July 2020 (Friday)

I finished!

Or at least I finished with the filing (and paying) part of it. I won’t really be done until I go back through and make sure I’ve documented everything, and then compiled it all into a set of files I can sock away into my digital archives, confident that if I need it again, I’ll be able to find it (and understand it). I’ll do that today, while I still have fresh and at least reasonably full understanding of the work I’ve just done.

I was talking yesterday in here about how large a burden this doing-of-taxes is, how long it takes and how frustrating it can be, and thinking about the possibility of handing it off to professionals at some point.

It’s a valid idea, but there is another way of looking at it.

That other way says this is just another version of the argument I’ve used to justify mowing my own lawn, gardening, keeping other responsibilities that might at first analysis seem not to be the best use of my time. It’s the argument that these diversions are important breaks from my other work, from my “real” work, and that they can be helpful to my creativity.

It could be that it’s good for my mind to face this tax puzzle each year, that it keeps me sharp, that it’s a benefit to face puzzles like this from multiple genres on a regular basis. Because that’s what taxes are, or rather what the tax-filing process is. It’s complex and demanding. It is me trying to decipher a logic that eventually can make sense, but that doesn’t necessarily follow my own logic. It might be equivalent in this way to learning calculus or Spanish.

I’ll use this argument as my justification for continuing to do it myself, at least for now. And I’ll take the challenge of streamlining my process so it doesn’t take so long to complete as just another level of the larger game.

Maybe I can enjoy it at least a little bit if I take that approach.