I‘d wanted to be able to post something else today, but what would have needed to happen for me to be able to do so didn’t. So much said, I did still want to put something out into the world today, if only so that I can offer the folks who have been keeping up with reading what I write something they can look at until what I expect will be regular updates resume–for a time. #NaPoWriMo2026 still looms, and my little poll is still open, so there’s still time for you to nudge me one way or another. I hope you’ll do it.

In the small Texas Hill Country town where I live, it is currently Spring Break (although not for much longer; classes resume Monday). I’ve not been able to get out a whole lot, as might be expected, but I have the impression that a lot of people are away from town, taking their kids camping or to a beach or some such thing. Given my day-job, I cannot do such things anymore; it is tax season, and I prepare taxes, so this is when I have to be working hardest. I’ve been trying to do that, keeping up with incoming returns as best as I can. Sometimes, I’m able to offer good news to clients, whether that means they’re getting money back or having to pay in less than they had thought they would have to. Sometimes, I have to do the opposite, and it’s never an easy conversation for me to have.

I am entirely sympathetic to those who have paid in throughout the year and who end up owing more tax at the end of it than they had expected. It’s vexatious to go along, doing what you’ve been told you’re supposed to do, only to find that it’s not enough; so much is true of many things other than taxes, as well. And I’ve been in the position before, finding that I’ve owed more money than I’d anticipated and not necessarily having it ready to shell out when it needed to be paid. (Indeed, I’m looking at a quarterly tax payment before too long, freelancing having been going pretty decently so far this year, and while I know that it’s in my interest to make the payment, I don’t relish the thought of doing so.) Things work out in such ways, math and application of rules resulting in inconvenience and hardship, and even when it’s not my fault that things happen the way they do, it’s not easy to tell someone that, yes, they will have to kick in more.

That doesn’t begin to touch on the people who tell themselves taxation is theft–and the irony of many of the people I have heard say such things working in public-sector jobs after attending public colleges and universities does not escape me. (I am explicitly and specifically not commenting on the in/correctness of the position, it being one of the things for which I have an eleven-foot pole, only pointing out that 1) dealing with such folks in my tax-prep office is not necessarily pleasant and 2) there is not seldom tension between stated position and observed behavior.) It’s an unfortunate reality of the occupation; although still professionalized, it’s a customer-service job as much as it is anything else, and so there are always ruffled feathers to be found.

In any event, there is always more to do. The next few weeks will be busy ones, but that’s honestly true of most times and places. And there is at least this: I am never bored.

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