journal features

it's tax time—more belt tightening

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2011.11.06

I'm an independent IT contractor, and I bill my current client through my incorporated business.

It gives me certain tax advantages. But that comes with a lot of tax reporting overhead, and today's the day I started to catch up on ten months of employment via that company. Needless to say, it took most of the day.

And unfortunately, I've learned that I'm not quite as good with my money as I'd hoped. The figures are small, but I've squandered some cash on electronics bits and pieces that I eventually wasn't using—such as the new power adapter for the laptop that shortly died; or the VOIP device that I couldn't get working properly.

But more than that, it's the tendency for us to eat out two or sometimes three times on a weekend that's to blame. And as part of our austerity program, the restaurant meals have already stopped.

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner