Owen Flanagan was on a quest to understand what it takes to live a good life. As he prepared an essay for the book How to Live a Good Life: A Guide to Choosing Your Personal Philosophy he tells the story of when he interviewed the Dalai Lama. Knowing that Buddhists consider resentment and anger as very bad, he asked the Dalai Lama if it would be wrong to want to go back in time and kill Hitler.
The solution to too much or too little weight is solved with generally the same strategies. There are three things needed to maintain an ideal weight: diet, exercise and sleep. Do it right and you stand a good chance of living a long time. Do it right and you increase your chances at high levels of health and happiness. Do it right and your level of happiness should go up significantly. Do it right and you will truly be wealthy.
Burnout sets in post-tax season. Long hours working leads to exhaustion only to be repeated the next day eventually takes its toll. Recovery is less certain than in the past. Age is part of it, but the new tax code and demands from a wider audience also play a role. Due to these factors there will be significant changes to this blog going forward.
The most notable change will be the publishing schedule. Tax season became so overwhelming something had to give. I reduced the publishing schedule from three times a week with a “Stalking” edition on Saturday to twice per week.
What surprised me was the increase in traffic when I reduced the amount of material published! I was warned
Yesterday was April Fools’ Day; it was also Easter. I couldn’t bring myself to pull a prank on the day celebrated by Christians of Jesus’ resurrection. But today is fair game!
To lighten the mood as your favorite accountant traverses the bowels of the late stages of the current tax season I decided to publish something fun. (Well, it was fun to me.) Be forewarned. After two months of sleep deprivation there is something seriously wrong with my head. While I think this is funny, you may not. Of course this doesn’t belong published on a personal finance blog. That’s why I published it.
My youngest daughter turned 18 on Wednesday and while Mrs. Accountant and I are not yet officially empty nesters the handwriting is on the wall. High school needs to be finished and an adjustment into adulthood is in order before she leaves. The timing is the only thing undecided.
My oldest daughter (I have two girls) stuck around home milking mom and dad for all it was worth. At first the prodding was gentle. As the years passed the cattle prod was more insistent. It’s wasn’t about her behavior either.
I’m different. I’ve always been different. I was born with a big disadvantage. Before I was a year old I had more surgeries than most people in a lifetime. At twelve I started taking over a dozen medications. Pill after pill is cut and placed in a dispenser like that of a 90 year old man.
Dad picks on me that all the pills I take are a meal in itself. My parents are supportive, but they have no idea how much of a pain it is to be sick all the time.
I’m also different from my family in other ways. My sister wants to travel the world and teach English (more on that later). My dad hates traveling past the mailbox at the end of the driveway. He says he wants to build a wall around the farm. When Trump came out with his wall on the Mexican border dad said he needs to talk to Trump and see if he could get a section built around the farm.
As a society we think of certain people as more prone to ethical lapses. This might be the result of the professions involved. Police officers make repeated ethical decisions every day. Judges, prosecutors and even jury members must deal with their personal ethics and that of others. But law enforcement or military personnel aren’t the only ones thrust into serious choices. Attorneys and doctors are forced into making decisions that might not seem ethical at first, but they are often forced to make a choice and fast. No choice is an ethical choice all too often with serious consequences.
The dog days of tax season are here. I’m dead tired and not as caught up as I was a week ago. Missing documents and research put me in a minor bind. Still looking good, but for the record, I took a short nap at my desk Friday. I was cooked. I’m off Saturday, but working Sunday to prepare for a phone meeting with Mr. Money Mustache. The quiet, empty office is conducive to massive productivity. You’d be surprised what no interruptions can do to a guy’s efficiency.