April 30th is the Deadline for personal income tax filing in Canada. Every year, I tell myself I’ll get organized ahead of time. I promise myself I will set up templates that I can use year after year.

I suppose I could hire someone to do this and avoid the pain. But once I get started, I find the whole process enlightening. How many workshops did I attend? How many online courses did I pay for? How many more Resource Books have I bought to add to my collection?

It’s my Year in Review. Oddly enough, each year, I also promise not to buy any more Resource Books, but it’s a guilty pleasure for a writer and I do read at least half of them.

One of the online courses I took this year was from Young Adult writer Sarra Cannon. She taught us about keeping good records and how to track expenses in spreadsheets. I’ve set up sheets for Office Expenses, Supplies, Memberships, etc and made formulas so all the info gets summarized on Page One. It’s fascinating to watch it evolve.

Now that I’ve created these headings and formulas (formulae?) it makes sense to copy the file, delete the entries (but not the formula/ae) and save it for the 2013 edition of My Taxes. Then on a regular basis, I can fill it in.

All that’s left to do is define regular.

And so, the plan? Do the taxes. Finish them TODAY. And then begin again on the novel. Even if it’s only opening the files, and spending as long as it takes to drink a hot cup of tea with them.

Got your taxes done yet? Having fun?

photo from photos.com #87758338