I spent the day doing taxes. It wasn’t very creative but it was productive. I got up early and set right to work on it. I’d like to say my taxes aren’t really that difficult but there is this thing, the job that I trade hours for money (unlike my art career). That job makes an adventure out of tax time.

Both my husband and I work from home. We work with people with special needs, helping them find and access resources. At the end of the year we get a seperate W-2 for each person we work with. Between the 2 of us, that meant 54 W-2’s this year. Can you imaging logging 54 jobs into your computer tax program? Better than hand writing them I guess. Most of the year it’s a pretty good gig, we get to meet amazing people, we laugh a lot, we cry a bit and we may even get a chance to make a difference. But then comes tax time. Each of these 54 W-2’s came in those envelope things that you have to tear each side off to get to the document, not envelopes that you can just use an opener on. (whine whine, that’s 216 sides I had to tear off, just sayin’ – If I’m going to whine I want to do it properly.)

Good news for me though, I had set aside 2 weeks to focus on the taxes. Somehow, I pulled it off on the first Tuesday. I think it’s fair to say I’ve learned some organizational skills related to tax time over the years.

Now I’ve opened up some time to learn Adobe Illustrator! I spent 6 or 7 hours on this 56 minute class from Helen Bradley on Skillshare – Stylish Doodles. This is one of the little bits that come out of it. So much to learn, so much joy of discovery! ahh, happy place.