The clock ticks inexorably toward midnight, and Chris and I are nowhere near completing our taxes. Again.
It’s not that we’re mindless procrastinators. We’re both in deadline-oriented lines of work—mine featuring actual deadlines, his the deadline of a performance time. We work hard. We meet our responsbilities. We take out our recyclables on the correct days, at the correct times, in the correct receptacles. We just can’t seem to get our freaking taxes done on time.
What’s the problem, you ask? Well, this year, I was out of the country for the weeks leading up to the filing deadline. Why couldn’t we have wrapped things up earlier, you ask? Well, we were kinda busy, juggling jobs and raising a kid and being pregnant and stuff.
What about previous years, you ask? Well, there was that one year we apparently forgot to press “send” and Intuit failed to register our Turbotax filing. It turns out the IRS doesn’t think that’s a legitimate excuse. And then there was last year. I can’t remember why we couldn’t file on time last year. All I know is we wound up pressing “send” sometime in mid-fall.
Missing deadlines gives me agita I don’t need, and yet we can’t seem to keep from missing the big one, at least as far as personal finance goes. If we fail this one, doesn’t this mean we fail at time management? What’s wrong with us? Are we alone?
POST-SCRIPT: I’m not alone!!! There are 10.3 million other procrastinating, lazy-a**, 1040-dodging jerks this year! Failure loooves company.