At the start of this year I said, to myself, that I would return to blogging and cut back on Twitter. I’m pretty sure I said something similar at the start of 2017, looking back I see I managed three posts in 2017, an improvement on 2016 when I churned out one post. So here I am, 28 days into 2018, posting my first update. I only have to add three more after this one and I’ll have improved upon last year’s effort. I’m not going to count my chickens just yet.
January is usually the month I sink into self assessment procrastination woes. I registered as self-employed with HMRC in 2007 and since then have always managed to leave doing my tax return until January. Usually I start it the first or second week in January and when I say start I mean I talk about it a lot. Looking over my submission records, the earliest I have ever submitted my return has been the 25 January and that was this year. The normal routine is I come home from the day job and open up the computer, stare at the excel spreadsheets I created the year before and try and make sense of the figures, then I browse some websites and decide I’ll look at the tax return the next day. Rinse and repeat.
Often I’ll come home and declare to myself, No bloody taxes today! So sit down with a mug of tea and scroll through NetFlix in order to find something to take my mind off the looming 31 January deadline. Now and then I’ll see something that looks interesting but the tell myself that I should get engrossed in anything until I’ve done my tax return, so I’ll add it to my list and then settle upon something easy going on the brain.
For the last while this has been Brooklyn Nine-Nine, a show I love to hate because I loathe the main actor, Andy Samberg. I like every other character except his and it’s only my love for the likes of Chelsea Peretti, Joe Lo Truglio, Melissa Fumero, Terry Crews and Andre Braugher that keeps me watching but despite their talents I can still only watch a maximum of three episodes at a time before getting so annoyed with him that I have to switch it off.
Now I’ve submitted my tax return I can now settle down to watch some of the shows I’ve earmarked. First up is season two of Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency although I fear I may have to re-watch season one given I have the memory of a thing that forgets things very quickly…what’s it called again?!
