2020-06-20 — Happy Solstice 😊

(Yawn)

I’ve already been nodding off a little, and I’m soooooo ready to hit the sack and just sleeeeeeeeep until I wake up (which will probably be early because my body just will out of habit 🙃).

Today was the last day to turn in May’s sales taxes, so that’s what I’ve been doing for the last hour and forty minutes or so. Fortunately, I made estimated payments all the way through June, which means it was just the formality of pulling together and submitting my stuff to the dozen or so cities I worked in during the month of May, but I don’t actually owe anything. I paid an estimated payment for June, as well, I believe, so I think I’m covered for the time being and won’t owe anything again until July, or something like that.

I really do love prepaying my future financial obligations. It’s a blessing that I have the means to, and it’s just… nice. Once the money is out of my account, it’s sort of “out of sight, out of mind;” but then when I remember that I’ve prepaid, and the money coming in is all mine. It’s like a little extra gift. It’s the same idea as tax returns for others, I think. If I were a good investor, I’d hold onto my money as long as I could, so I could make money with it before paying the debts owed, as prepaying debts, or paying more in taxes than needed in order to get a bigger tax return later just means that all that money that could have been working for me for x amount of time is out of my control and doing nothing for me other than helping me not spend it frivolously.

Anyone who knows me knows that spending frivolously isn’t a part of my nature, so I probably could benefit from holding onto my money longer, but… I don’t mind the trade off. I like knowing that every dollar in my accounts is actually mine and isn’t set to be given to someone else.

Now that I think of it, though, I could just have a separate account where I send the money that I’ll be paying to everyone–a “not my money” account (except for what it earns in interest). I’d just have to train myself to think of that money as not mine when I see it on my statements. That’s just a mental exercise and probably not hard to do. Is it worth it, though? Interest nowadays is so little that… well… it’s pretty much zero–at least my accounts are. I’ve thought about getting some accounts with places that have 2+% interest rates, but honestly, I love to have my money ready at the disposal, and the best-interest banks are online (they don’t have the brick-and-mortar overhead, so they can give better rates, I guess?). That slows the access to the funds, meaning that if a fabulous deal on something comes up, I may not have time to get my money where the deal is before someone else swoops in and grabs it.

Anyway… I’m rambling. I’m glad to be done with my sales taxes for the current cycle. It’s 12:15 a.m., and I’m soooooo ready for sleep. Brings a smile to my face just thinking about it (sleeping). 😁

Man… I haven’t done anything but work for a while. As I sit here in my room in my recliner, I glance about at the piles and piles of documents I need to go through for my various business requirements. I haven’t touched them in weeks, as busy as we’ve been.

I look at my two guitars sitting on their stands, my keyboard, the microphone on the stand… I haven’t played my instruments or done any singing in I don’t know how long.

Laundry needs to be done. My hair needs to be cut. The lawn still needs to be mowed (though I did finally remember to put the gas can in the Durango, and it only took two days to remember to actually fill it up on the way home for the day, so it’s full and ready to fill the mower. Still need to do an oil change on the mower. The filter and whatnot came today in the mail. I don’t even know when the last time was that the oil was changed in the mower.

Anyway, there’s a mountain of things on my to-do list. It’s hard to know what to do on my day off. I can go relax, go to one of my favorite places, like in Mark Twain National Forest, a quiet place where pretty much nobody goes on Roaring River. There are a bunch of bald eagles that live/hunt/fish whatever over there. I love the place. I could go there and just take a load off for a good while.

Relaxing when I have so many urgent things to be done is hard, though. Then I feel even more behind when I come back from “relaxing.” I put it in quotes because it’s hard to fully let go and relax when I know I have a mountain of things that if I don’t do them on my day off, they just won’t ever get done, and every day that goes by without them getting done adds to my stress levels… so… there you go: hard to know what to do on my days off.

I feel like I’m rambling a lot.

On a different note, it was a slower day today. The phone didn’t ring off the hook, which is a little odd for a Saturday. It’s been slower the last two days. I still worked a long, hard, full day, but I don’t really feel like I got much of anything done. I did two jobs, and my tech did five, but his were mostly super quick jobs. There wasn’t much of substance to the jobs today–lots of quick diagnostics for jobs that are best done elsewhere, I think (such as computers that need to be replaced and programmed, modules that are in the same category, etc.).

Anyway, I wouldn’t call it relaxing or slow. It was hard, focused, stay-on-top-of-things work for most of the day, but it wasn’t a frantic pace, just a stiff one, being on the phone pretty much all day, it seemed.

#1. I’m grateful that the Rogers AutoZone store has been more attentive to me lately. They lost me as their home store because of that and other things, and since I’ve left, they’ve been much more attentive when I am there, so that’s nice.

#2. I had a customer pay me with 95 ones, I think it was, and another 50 fives, and I was grateful that the same AutoZone was willing to change them to big bills for me. That was nice of them.

#3. I’m grateful for my new trickle charger. It’s been good to have. I’ve used it on jobs twice now, to charge the battery while I was working on repairs and whatnot. I don’t know if it’s paid for itself yet. In fact, it might actually prevent me from making some of the money that I could, helping to restore people’s batteries instead of having to replace them (I bought the really nice one that’s supposed to be able to resurrect some bad batteries), but it’s better for the customer, and in the end, that’s most important. Saving the customer money is good for all of us.

#4. I’m grateful for my Sunday day off. Let’s hope I can handle the day off a little better and be prepared for the day-off-blues that will likely try to make an appearance. I’m so ready for this lovely free time, though.

#5. I’m grateful to making positive strides. My fuse has been a lot slower to blow lately. I’ve been more patient. I’ve certainly had my moments, but I’ve been better at handling things when circumstances go a little sideways. I’ve not been getting as angry/frustrated as often. I’ve been handling less than ideal happenings much better… it’s been good.

Well, my lovelies. I’m gonna crash. Loves and hugs from this little dude on the Hill in northwest Arkansas. 😊

Lift the World.

~ stephen