Can a Person Make a Post About Filing Intersting? Probably Not.

Tonight, as I was watching Lost I filed. I have a bad habit of letting mail that looks boring just pile up, and a few times a year I open them up and file them. I frequently miss notices about investment seminars, and the latest banking fee increases until months after they're either past or already in effect.

I'm good at filing. A filing cabinet was one of the first things I bought when I left the nest 11 years ago. I have letter and legal sized file folders. I have hanging files to hold the folders. I have a pink accordion file to hold bills and such that I have to open in a timely manner before I file them in the cabinet.

It used to be that the cabinet held papers and school work. All that is still sitting in the bottom drawer collecting dust. But now? Now it's all about the top drawer.

Mortgage and insurance info. Bank statements. Investment summaries.
The purpose of tonight's filing frenzy was of course to put together a proper file to do my taxes. I have an accountant. He's lovely. I tried doing my own taxes once. And failed. Epically.

So as I waited for Sawyer to get around to taking his shirt off, I prepared a list of questions. How long do I have to keep old pay stubs, if at all? Same for old bills and credit card statements. I concluded that I probably didn't have to keep them for more than a year, but for interest sake, perhaps I should prepare a spreadsheet so I can compare from year to year before I got rid of them. And since I now only have access to paystubs online I debated about whether I should create a paystub file on my home computer, and how much space that would take up since they're all pdfs.....

Bored yet? Yeah, me too. Suddenly I stopped writing questions down, and began laughing to myself. I was reminded about the conversation I had with My Dear Anon the other day about her tax filing habits, and about someone I know who is getting their wages garnished etc etc.

When did this happen? When did I start to care about taxes in an actual tangible way? And creating spreadsheets to track bill payments? And hoarding paystubs?

My Dear Anon and I? We used to skip Family Studies classes, and have the teacher find us in the cafeteria asking how our 60 minute flu was (yeah, we were stealthy). A paycheque was something that got me to Europe and paid for tattoos and took me to the bar.

Now My Dear Anon hoards money like she gets to take it with her, and I buy cute little accordion files. Wtf??

After careful thought, I concluded that I do not in fact want to go back to my class-skipping age. I had enough trials and tribulations in that era to be glad that I'm over it. But this? This is the part of adulthood that makes teenagers think that growing up sucks.

It makes me wonder how I learned to care and do all these grown-uppish kind of tasks. How did I ever get to the place where I have a mortgage and automatically renewing condo insurance? How is it possible that I actually get angry that I don't have a drycleaner close to home? Why would I rather buy decorating magazines than a Cosmo, and then don't actually end up buying either of them because magazines are a waste of money?

Who the hell is this person?