Filing taxes last night was so nice. Really. No, really! We got all the kids to bed then spread out our massive piles of books, receipts, notepads, and laptops. Going over the receipts we laughed about all the craziness of last year until that magical moment, 11:54 when E pressed Send.
Maybe it was so nice because we rarely get stress-free nights like that. (Yes, relatively speaking, taxes are now peaceful compared to other things.) Maybe it was nice because we got to see 2006 at a glimpse -- we did so many great things last year! I love finetuning life so it was fun for me to see what choices we had make & debate whether or not I would make the same "mistakes" now. We made a lot of great choices last year and the choices that didn't make good sense tax-wise were good choices morally. There's something so powerful about making lots of good little choices. They accumulate. What is that called? Compound moral interest? There must be a great economic term for it.
It was really encouraging to see the year in one breath like that. Usually, on a day-to-day basis when I am struggling through the goo of the day's mismanaged schedule, I feel highly unproductive, ineffective, like I am making a long list of poor choices. But, when I look at the big picture, I can see that a lot of that discouragement is just the naturally feeling of trudging through goo. Big ah-ha for me.
