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The secret joy of doing your taxes is a life audit – like time travel for the soul The secret joy of doing your taxes is a life audit – like time travel for the soul
(5 months later)
In January of last year, I had dinner at a Greek restaurant in Astoria, Queens. It was a family-style place, with fiberglass mermaids built into the wall and crookedly hung photos of the owners' ancestral village. A friend and I had spent the afternoon at Costco and then wandered around, taking photos of the British food in the ethnic section of the Euromart and begging samples of baklava off the guy in the bakery. The restaurant, which was packed with families, gave me Sunday night homesickness and I thought, fleetingly, What am I doing here? The check came to $35. In January of last year, I had dinner at a Greek restaurant in Astoria, Queens. It was a family-style place, with fiberglass mermaids built into the wall and crookedly hung photos of the owners' ancestral village. A friend and I had spent the afternoon at Costco and then wandered around, taking photos of the British food in the ethnic section of the Euromart and begging samples of baklava off the guy in the bakery. The restaurant, which was packed with families, gave me Sunday night homesickness and I thought, fleetingly, What am I doing here? The check came to $35.
It was not a defined enough New York memory to have stuck and, unless we'd gone back, I'd probably never have retrieved it. That is, if I hadn't been raking over my credit-card bill ahead of next week's IRS deadline.It was not a defined enough New York memory to have stuck and, unless we'd gone back, I'd probably never have retrieved it. That is, if I hadn't been raking over my credit-card bill ahead of next week's IRS deadline.
Every year, doing your taxes and reviewing your finances is the same: there is the government paperwork, and then there is the shadow of sentimental feedback, slowing down the exercise of tax-filing and receipt-sifting with alternating sorrow and joy – and incredulity that another year has passed.Every year, doing your taxes and reviewing your finances is the same: there is the government paperwork, and then there is the shadow of sentimental feedback, slowing down the exercise of tax-filing and receipt-sifting with alternating sorrow and joy – and incredulity that another year has passed.
With each entry on each form, you pause, either to resist or allow the memory:With each entry on each form, you pause, either to resist or allow the memory:
Oh, yes, those are the croissants from Zabar's I took to that interview I'd been dreading, but that turned out to be great.Oh, yes, those are the croissants from Zabar's I took to that interview I'd been dreading, but that turned out to be great.
There's that weird phase I went through, buying up GoDaddy URLs for business ideas I'd forgotten by evening. (Can I still put through HappinessVisible.com, my fantasy online self-help portal, as part of my year in entrepreneurship?)There's that weird phase I went through, buying up GoDaddy URLs for business ideas I'd forgotten by evening. (Can I still put through HappinessVisible.com, my fantasy online self-help portal, as part of my year in entrepreneurship?)
Oh, god, $40 worth of fried chicken from Lansky's that you made me buy for the flight to LA, which I thought was ridiculous and then, somewhere over Indiana, while everyone else ate scary Delta ham sandwiches, I had fried chicken – and thought you were the greatest genius in the world.Oh, god, $40 worth of fried chicken from Lansky's that you made me buy for the flight to LA, which I thought was ridiculous and then, somewhere over Indiana, while everyone else ate scary Delta ham sandwiches, I had fried chicken – and thought you were the greatest genius in the world.
It's mostly food. It's also mostly unremarkable. Unless you obsessively keep diaries or go back over your Twitter output, there is no way back in to the sheer volume of experience, except through the annual IRS life audit – and it's all the more powerful for being so trivial. Here is a year of your life, nailed to a spreadsheet with its implied cost-benefit analysis. Win, lose or draw, the vertigo of looking back is not a comfortable experience.It's mostly food. It's also mostly unremarkable. Unless you obsessively keep diaries or go back over your Twitter output, there is no way back in to the sheer volume of experience, except through the annual IRS life audit – and it's all the more powerful for being so trivial. Here is a year of your life, nailed to a spreadsheet with its implied cost-benefit analysis. Win, lose or draw, the vertigo of looking back is not a comfortable experience.
Nostalgia performs no evolutionary function; it arrests progress. I suppose, at a pinch, it might stop you from making the same mistakes twice, although that assumes you are looking back with any degree of honesty. Maybe the sentimentality takes the edge off what would otherwise be the unbearable sharpness of the present. Here's a receipt for that trip I thought I'd die if I went on, and yet here I am. Plus ça change.Nostalgia performs no evolutionary function; it arrests progress. I suppose, at a pinch, it might stop you from making the same mistakes twice, although that assumes you are looking back with any degree of honesty. Maybe the sentimentality takes the edge off what would otherwise be the unbearable sharpness of the present. Here's a receipt for that trip I thought I'd die if I went on, and yet here I am. Plus ça change.
There are a few practical surprises in the tax return turned life review. Like, oh, wow, I'd forgotten reading the New York Times online wasn't free – and why am I still subscribing to People magazine? A friend just discovered she had, for the last seven years, been paying for a mobile phone she didn't even remember buying.There are a few practical surprises in the tax return turned life review. Like, oh, wow, I'd forgotten reading the New York Times online wasn't free – and why am I still subscribing to People magazine? A friend just discovered she had, for the last seven years, been paying for a mobile phone she didn't even remember buying.
Mostly, however, mid-April in the US means emotional time travel, at warp speed through every transactional moment of the last 12 months, zipping from the line at the post office to the bar where that guy wouldn't stop going on about his marriage, to the sample sale at Dwell just after the baby was born and it was spring and getting the stroller up the steps was fraught and I should have bought the cashmere throw but it seemed ridiculous to buy Christmas presents in April and you said why don't we live in Soho and I said you're just high from finding that parking space, it'll pass.Mostly, however, mid-April in the US means emotional time travel, at warp speed through every transactional moment of the last 12 months, zipping from the line at the post office to the bar where that guy wouldn't stop going on about his marriage, to the sample sale at Dwell just after the baby was born and it was spring and getting the stroller up the steps was fraught and I should have bought the cashmere throw but it seemed ridiculous to buy Christmas presents in April and you said why don't we live in Soho and I said you're just high from finding that parking space, it'll pass.
Not to be morbid, but there will be years, one realizes, when this exercise will be full of hospital bills and emergency flights and you have to shut down the domino run of that particular thought process.Not to be morbid, but there will be years, one realizes, when this exercise will be full of hospital bills and emergency flights and you have to shut down the domino run of that particular thought process.
Oh, but here's lunch at Blockheads and the bag of H&H bagels that made you say why aren't we living on the east side and I said there are too many bankers and the curtain on that particular argument starts rising, but it's bumped a moment later by the hotel in Long Island where they gave us the cabana for half-price and I have safe harbour for 20 minutes in the memories of summer.Oh, but here's lunch at Blockheads and the bag of H&H bagels that made you say why aren't we living on the east side and I said there are too many bankers and the curtain on that particular argument starts rising, but it's bumped a moment later by the hotel in Long Island where they gave us the cabana for half-price and I have safe harbour for 20 minutes in the memories of summer.
The IRS is not, officially, a gateway to anything but resentment, so this side effect of tax season feels like a bonus. Even if you tack toward denial, as I do, there is something to be said for reclaiming forgotten shards of your own history. Maybe it adds up to something or maybe it doesn't, but either way it feels like a ballast against the sense that it's all evaporating too quickly. It is emotionally easier when the tax comes off at source, before you get your paycheck, but what can you do? It's the price of doing business.The IRS is not, officially, a gateway to anything but resentment, so this side effect of tax season feels like a bonus. Even if you tack toward denial, as I do, there is something to be said for reclaiming forgotten shards of your own history. Maybe it adds up to something or maybe it doesn't, but either way it feels like a ballast against the sense that it's all evaporating too quickly. It is emotionally easier when the tax comes off at source, before you get your paycheck, but what can you do? It's the price of doing business.