I bet you’re all wondering how a slacker like me can look forward to tax season.You know what my impetus is? It’s really simple. It’s called BEING POOR .

Anyways, in 2005 I worked first at an animal center, working with the boarding animals. It was a good physical job, and I figured if I had so many problems dealing with people, perhaps it would be for the best to begin working with dogs first. Plus, I got free doggy daycare for my dog, so we were around each other all day, so it was a good arrangement. Not a well paying one, but a good start. The only problem with these incredibly repetitive kinds of jobs is that you get sick of them, especially if you aren’t particularly enamored with your boss (who you went to school with and was two years younger than you). Fortunately, I was only working 30 hours and they wanted someone for 40, so it was the perfect reason to leave.

From there I moved to the world of folding towels, handing out locker room keys, and coming up with membership campaigns as I began my next job at an athletic club. It was a good job, nice hours, still awful pay. I got reprimanded for not being perky enough (ironically, this has become a running theme in my work life), but I got a good title (“Director of Marketing”) out of it, I and started acclimating to working with people.

This time last year, it was these two jobs and their W-2s I had to deal with when filing taxes. I got pretty much everything back, and then I got this thing called and Earned Income Credit? That was like Christmas! Sweet! I continued working at the Athletic Club until some developer bought it to level it and put in a bunch of condominiums. It didn’t really matter though, because I was moving to Hawaii. My parents were planning on moving there before I came into the picture, so it’s a kind of ‘where they go, I go to’ deal.

So I’m off to Hawaii. In Idaho, my folks had their whole bedroom/bathroom suite upstairs; here I’m 4 feet away from them. It’s been a rough transition for sure, but that’s not the topic. My first job here was through a temp agency which involved the opening and revival of a new restaurant in a mall. This job required a cheerleader person, and I’m not quite that bubbly. After two months, it was again an amicable separation.

The next month was among the worst of my life, when out of nowhere, my dog suddenly has cancer and dies in less than 2 months. I was with him when he left, and I sang him to sleep, but it still was the worst thing I’ve had to deal with in my life. And believe me; the tears are flowing as I write this.

4 days after that happened, I was offered this job. Between this and leaving my temp job, I had been unemployed for about a month. In a way, it helped a lot to have something else to focus on. Sometimes it was a feat to keep myself together, but I did. The days went by, the phones got answered, the year ended, and I kept putting one foot in front of another in my quest to join the rest of the world and be a ‘normal’ person.

I did my taxes this week. The 1040EZ is nothing. It’s the filling out two part time resident ones that suck. Fortunately, I’m pretty good at reading instructions, so though I’d rather be napping, they got done. And what do you know? There’s a fair chunk of change coming back to me! Just like last year! Just like Christmas!

I guess the moral of this story is that a slacker CAN do taxes. And I did them, on my own, no help. When you know you’ve been using the government as a sort of piggy bank by overpaying (yes, I know this is not the smartest thing to do, and that money could be doing a lot of other things, but I’m not at that point yet), breaking it open and getting that cash back is enough to get almost anyone off the couch.