Escape.

There are so many things I try to escape. The past. The present. The future.

Maybe escape isn’t the right word, avoid might be better.

Case in point: I have this big pile of papers floating around the house. Receipts, bills and the like. All the deritus of a tax return. About ten years back I got in the habit of not filing. Paying but, not filing. Consequently, over the years, I have had to deal with all kinds of threatening letters, phonecalls and visits by the IRS as they try to terrorize me into paying them to go away.

Thankfully, my accountant has done a remarkable job when I have gotten him the necessary paperwork and has filed the necessary papers to save me thousands of dollars.

As he explained it to me, the IRS banks on people being terrified of them. They target people in a certain income bracket because they are more likely to just pay up and make the IRS go away than to fight it out. This excludes the very poor, who don’t have anything of value to speak of, and the very rich (or upper income brackets) who are more than likely to take the time and expense to get the help they need to stymie the claims against them.

This leaves the vanishing “middle class” of which I consider myself a member.

So, I keep getting these notices and usually I find myself overwhelmed with just the daily chores of living and work that I put off dealing with something that will make a significant difference in the quality of my life. Imagine, I’ve lived with this for ten years!

Anyway, I keep putting it off but, it’s getting to the point where even I’m annoyed by it so, now that things have freed up a little, it’s time to sit my ass down and sort through all those papers. Probably the job won’t be as bad as I think since I’ve already done a lot of the work and just need to finish (which is always the hardest part).