Tax Season in the Tail Lights

It's the last day of official tax season.

I'll skip the usual qualifiers about how many other deadlines and responsibilities there are in a general service CPA firm.  Most of you know that by now.  It's the most intense deadline, but far from the only one.

Nevertheless, it is an important milestone to shift past.  Especially in my "semi-retirement", I'll be glad to see it in the rearview, and maybe get more time for other opportunities.

Today is an unusual day for me.  It would be difficult to start new returns and get them filed on time.  This is due to my work being earlier in the process.  What I do gets passed on to others, and those stages make it almost impossible to process in time.  But it can't be ruled out.  It's been done before, but it ain't pretty.

Other tax deadline business may come from tax returns that were done earlier, but the client discovers an important change they want to make.  It could be our mistake.  It could be something they forgot to bring us.  Whatever it is, it may require an emergency fix.

I have other work to catch up on, and I may be doing that.  I look at the day as like being a firefighter.  You have to be there on call, but what you could be called to do is fairly unpredictable.

This has been a tough season.  Not necessarily because of the time involved - it has been much reduced from prior years.  It's tough because I have discovered that something I had stepped aside from is still an integral part of my life.  And over the season, I have grown to accept that it will probably continue to be for the foreseeable future.

Not that I'm giving up my other interests, and hopes of making money from my creative side.  I've ordered two books about becoming a voice artist (reading audiobooks and such), and I have many, many plans revolving around writing.  And there's always the possibility of being an extra in movies - if I ever can get my s..t together about that.

So Phase One of the year is just about over.   I'm looking forward to Phase Two, and it's increased levels of creative opportunity.

Or maybe just binge watching soap operas while eating bonbons.

Only time will tell.