Saturday Mornings

Don't you just love this time of year? The dreaded income tax. Five hundred slips (at least) to sort out. Every year I tell myself I will create a better system than tossing slips into a box and every year the same thing. Do you do that? If you have a better system, can you tell me what it is? I don't know. Maybe I just resent the hell out of having to pay the behemoth that is our federal government. I mean I wouldn't mind paying taxes if I could see the good that comes from the money they take. Perhaps I am too narrow in my vision. But my instinct tells me that there is mostly waste and bloat now. Hell I can see the waste in the community college district where I work. When I started there nearly 2 decades ago, much of the administrative work was done by the instructors. We divided the work up, got it done and we were not even paid extra to do it. But apparently that was not quite good enough because the management needed to "manage" us better. They needed in truth to get control over us. Can't have lowly teachers having that much power. Poor little naive children they are. I personally think they just needed to give their lives meaning because from what I could tell they were pretty superfluous to the day to day running of the college. So now 18 years later we have deans and senior deans and vice chancellors, the list is endless. And we have this gigantic budget to pay all these people who sit in their offices all day doing...doing what exactly? Well what we used to do for...nothing. And that is probably pretty much the case with the federal and state government as well. We are collapsing under the weight of our own bureaucracy. I want out. Do you too? I know a lot of people who want out. I don't need a big house but I can't sell it yet because well, I need a place to live still while I inch my way towards retirement or death, whichever comes first. Besides as we all know too well: this market sucks. So except for the really wealthy, we are basically all trapped in a life that has too much stuff and weight to it and not enough air and space. I want my life back. The one I had when I sat under a tree and wrote a story all day long and listened to the birds and watched the ants crawling around near my toes. I never knew what I had when my only ambition was to do nothing more than just be with the precious gift of time on my hands. Joni M. was so right. Don't it always seem to go.....well enough procrastination. Now back to the dreaded sorting of the slips like some ancient ritual that should end in a bonfire but instead will end with a check to my tax accountant. This really sucks, doesn't it?