The Lost Week Of The Year!
This has always been my favorite week of every year. It is the one most people take off if they can, but rarely has it ever been vacation time for me. It was just a week that no one thought about buying a home, or selling one. Since most people were dismantling their Christmas decorations, no one thought about painting their home either…until the first week of January when they noticed how empty and colorless it looked after the decorations were removed. Anyway, no one ever really needs me for anything during this week, so I am left to deal with myself and the things I never get to do for myself (read, I welcome those excuses and there are none to be found).
It always gave me a week with no income, to think creatively about how to start out the coming year adding sufficiently to my next year’s income. To do this correctly involved a review of the past year as well. I spend most of the ‘lost’ week trying to sort out last years financial information. I have found that if I get it to the point where I can hand it over to my accountant in January, it is a very good start to the year. If I don’t get it to that point, and instead start the year with one foot in the previous year, I will be dragging it all the way through April 15th, and possibly through an extension into July as well. Instead of flying into the new year with great ideas and hopes, I will feel like I am trying to run with cement Ugg boots! This is one of the most debilitating ways for an entrepreneur to start their new year that I can think of, and yet it is already weds of that week and I have yet to start my financial adventure.
I will spend today trying to neaten up the room in which I will begin the process. This is a distraction, of course, and I think I would do better to grab what I can of receipts and bills and go to the dining room table. However that table holds memories of my Dad working on taxes for months at a time, and I will have to overcome that mental block first. It will remain a contest between old mental images and the new one I am trying to visualize showing a competent me overcoming the temptation to procrastinate into the New Year. If I could actually get this done in the year we are about to leave, I truly would not need a single resolution on January 1st. I would have already accomplished the most important one! Time to take out my post-it notes and plaster them all over the house where I will go to avoid the obvious. Look out refrigerator, bathroom, TV, books, here I come!
I will let you know who wins out 🙂
I’m with you, girl! Mine involves closets, drawers, files, and numerous non-systems. Doing all this while surrounded by some of my favorite distractions (my children) makes me wish for another week off, too, before the new year – but using this one well is still within my reach! See you at the finish line! Love you!
I know what you mean, Joan. I’m just trying to clean out and rid myself of clutter before I can even think about tackling organizing papers, bills and etc. If everything I own had a home of its own in my apartment, I would be off to a good start in January. I hate having clutter! I think better storage might help for things I use but not often. I am making progress getting rid of things I don’t need. Moving often is certainly a motivation to not keep so much stuff. Planning for a tiny house is my biggest motivation. Good luck Joan and call me if you need additional motivation. I’m your cheerleader. By the way you are doing a great job on your blogs!