What I've Been Up To Lately

Taxes. Taxes. More taxes. Taxes consumed me for a month and a half. That isn't to say that I was working on them non-stop during that time. I took long leisurely breaks encompassing days. But even when I wasn't actually doing the taxes they weighed heavily on my mind. It was hard to think about much of anything else.

Next year it's going to be different. Yeah. Sure it is.

Here is how it is going to be different. For the rest of the year I will be preparing quarterly statements. I'll be looking at home office expenses, business miles on the car, every receipt, every expenditure we make, and I'll be compiling that information every three months. I was doing those things already, but not in any systematic way. It's the system that has to change. I always thought I would be able to catch up on these tiny details later, and I did. But tax time would have been so much easier if I hadn't had to bring all of my accounting records up to date before getting started.

I am not an accountant. I do not know how to use any fancy algorithms, and automated software doesn't appeal to me. I do really simple stuff. But I am interested in the details, and I enjoy paperwork. I prepared closing statements for home loan closings for a while, so I am good at reconciling accounts. I can do this. If I keep up with it.

Keeping up with it is the hard part. I will happily tell you how I do that at a later date.

Highlights of the last couple of weeks:

• Finding some old friends on-line and making plans to catch up with them, once I've caught my breath from the residual tax flurry. 
• Trading emails with the effervescent Emily Fowler, who is ministering with her husband and children in France right now.
• Typing up a list of commitments I've made to myself at Stephen Covey's behest, as I've been reading his business leadership classic, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and resolving to review those commitments daily. So far it is really working for me. One of my commitments is to review my calendar every morning so I'll never forget another WIC assessment or go to an eye-appointment half an hour late ever again. There are stories that go with those examples.
• Deciding to participate in Classical Conversations with Parker next year, so that we can get down to this education thing in well organized fashion.
• Music and Books. More music and books.

I've been busy. But then it has been four our five months since I blogged anything on a regular basis.