Challenges & Choices

I wasn’t actually sure I was going to survive last week. Everything that could go wrong pretty much did, and not just one or two days, but every day. On top of that, doing the poem-a-day workshop took up a lot of time I didn’t have, which means I didn’t get to bed on time any night last week (including this weekend). That means I didn’t get any reading time, or enough rest. Which put me behind today (Sunday, as I write this), because I slept late, and just a little bit ago I finally sat down to look at last year’s bookkeeping for the publishing business to see where I left off.

As far as I can tell, I started updating my financial program last year, decided I didn’t have enough time or energy or whatever, gave up, and just added up my sales reports for the total income & used my bank statements to calculate my expenditures. Which is absolutely fine/accurate for taxes, but now I’m two years and 2.5 months behind on bookkeeping for the business, and because I didn’t look at this earlier, I’m going to have to do the same thing this year. Which is way more work than actually clicking the button in the finance program to generate a sales/loss report for the year to plug into my tax program.

It’s also a lot more work than just keeping my finance books up to date once a month. Seriously.

Yet another thing in my life that I really need to just get control of and keep control of. It’s not hard, it’s not mysterious, it’s not something I need to “learn” how to do…I just need to do it. Because it will make my life exponentially easier, at least once a year.

I have no idea why I have such a mental block about taking care of finances, but there’s got to be a way to get past it and be more responsible in that area.

In other news, the poetry challenge has been both negative and positive. As I mentioned earlier, I really didn’t have time to do that, and I still don’t, and my sleep and reading/relaxing schedule was completely shot (not to mention any knitting/crochet time i the evenings). I really need to figure out some other way to keep up this week, because I can’t do a whole month like this…I’ll go insane.

On the other hand, I’ve discovered that poetry is a great warm-up for writing prose, and I’m actually enjoying writing poems far more than I thought I would. It has also increased my prose output just due to having that extra deadline hanging over my head, and I’m finally getting back to a reasonable per-night word count again. I think after the month is over, I’ll keep writing poetry…though at a much more moderate pace (say, one poem a week or so).

I’ve also discovered that I really like writing by hand on my cell and/or tablet. I have Samsung Note devices (cell & tablet) with the SNote program, which makes it easy, and I’ve found that handwriting first drafts and notes, and then typing the manuscript back in is a great editing tool.

Another boon is that it’s making me think more about word choice and sound in my prose, which is exactly what I was hoping it would do. So definitely worth it, if I can just regain some balance this week. Thankfully taxes aren’t due until the 18th this year, which gives me next Saturday to actually fill out the forms (yay TurboTax!), but I’ll have to calculate my profit/loss numbers working in the evenings this week. My eyes are already squinting at the thought of all that extra screen time.

This week is going to be all about collecting/calculating the business info I need for taxes, and also figuring out how to fit my poem-a-day in with my regular writing and still get to bed on time so I can read and recharge the brain before sleep (and getting enough sleep).

Next week, after my taxes are done and filed, it will be time to figure out how I’m going to get the bookkeeping all caught up, and keep it up to date from now on. *sigh*

And someday, maybe I’ll be rich enough to pay someone to do my accounting for me, right? (Don’t worry, I’m not holding my breath either.)

One comment on “Challenges & Choices

  1. Dolly Garland

    Aargh. I hear you. Not only they want our money…it has to be so bloody annoying to pay it.