2020-01-20 — Lights and Tunnels

Hola, folks!

To my surprise, I got up on time this morning. Having gotten to bed as late as I did, I didn’t wake up before my alarm went off, and when it did go off, I wanted to just go back to bed, but somehow I got up and I haven’t really been all that tired today, interestingly enough.

I’m late for bed again. It’s 8:32, and I should have been in bed by at least 8, but I’m doing pretty darn well with my schedule, honestly. So, that’s positive.

Let’s see… after my 5x5s and meditation and exercise and all that, I got sucked into taxes and lost track of time and didn’t eat or plan the day during that time slot. I did stop working on taxes for a bit to work on my nonprofit stuff during its proper time slot, so that was also good.

It’s been nice to get my head back out of the sand (mostly) and get going again on the things that are meaningful and make a difference. I reached out to multiple people about my phonetic project. I have one very excited mother who’s part of a homeschooling co-op who wants to help beta test everything. I also have come across two other organizations trying to do almost the same thing–one American based and one internationally based. I’ve reached out the international one multiple times, including maybe a couple years ago, but they weren’t interested in joining forces. I reached out to the American one today, as I’d never found them before, so I’m waiting to hear back.

Can’t wait to get done with all this tax stuff. I spent almost the whole day after my morning routine working on tax stuff, and there is some light at the end of the tunnel. I’m probably two full days of work from having both 2019 and 2020 submitted to my accountant. That said, it’s 2022 now, so I have 2021 to add to the list, but I believe my record keeping has been orders of magnitude more effective over the last year, so I’m hoping that it’ll be much smoother and much quicker to get through 2021.

Here’s hoping.

…

Speaking of taxes, just got sidetracked on them again (I’ve got some puzzles I’m trying to figure out that are taking up most of the time. It’s sooooo complicated if you’re gonna be 100% according to the law–so complicated (For example, I buy a tool from Amazon, but they don’t charge tax. Arkansas requires I pay sales tax, so I have to keep track of what I buy online that didn’t have sales tax charged, and I have to submit it to properly be charged sales tax [most states have this law for online purchases, I believe). So now I have this scanner, but I decide I don’t need it, so I sell it to my friend. Do I charge him tax because I’m a business? I don’t know. And if I should charge him tax, what jurisdiction? And do I have to both pay sales tax for when I bought it and charge him tax? And to make it even more complicated, this happened spanning tax years. I bought the tool in November, “sold” it to him in December, but he didn’t pay until the next year. So I have half the info on my 2018 return and the other on my 2019 return. But to make it even more lovely, in 2018 I didn’t have an accountant, so I couldn’t claim that particular tool in its entirety because it was too expensive, and they only let accountants claim the whole thing, so I didn’t claim it at all for 2018, and now it looks like I’m making an extra $3k for 2019 that isn’t income. It’s just getting my money back.

That’s a taste of it. So many complicated puzzles I have to figure out. I’m certainly learning what not to do for the future, though.

Anyway, folks, progress. I’m getting there, little by little. I’m almost free. Closer and closer. Can’t wait for all the clinging baggage to be pulled off and gone.

In other news, I’m considering learning Esperanto, unless I can find a better language out there that would make a good universal language. My ideal vision for the future is one where we’re able to communicate with everyone in the world and efficiently. I’m not sure how efficient a language Esperanto is. I believe it’s on par with English, which according to at least one study, is the most information dense language tested. So that would be good, but the utopian in me says, is there something even better?

What else… bought a vegan bamboo hair brush (yep, my hair is long enough now that I need a brush. 🙃) I also bought some new organic cotton/bamboo reusable paper towels (Basically kitchen towels 🙃) today. So… no more wasteful paper towels, and no more need for sponges (which are pretty nasty things, anyway)! Gonna do the same with napkins, and I just bought another handheld bidet set, so say goodbye to toilet paper again! When I first switched to my handheld bidet years ago, I figured I’d never go back. And… if the plumbing connections here had been more friendly, I probably wouldn’t have gone back. I mean, smearing feces around your rear end until it’s mostly gone isn’t really…

I mean, yuck.

But… complicated plumbing deterred me.

Well, I’m not going to let it deter me anymore. Tired of contributing to the waste and to the culture of wastefulness.

So… lots of changes and lots going on. Hope y’all enjoyed your days. Loves and hugs.

Lift the World.

~ stephen