At some point I realized that this was my week to post and Tuesday was the third. Not only was I not prepared to post, again, but I always spend a good portion of the third of each month dealing with finances, paying bills.
Wonderful. Two time-consuming things to deal with in the same day.
Tracking finances and paying bills can be even harder than finding the right words to use. As Bonnie can attest, there have been times when it’s taken a couple of days to get it all done. Though it was admittedly worse when everything was all on paper.
When it was just me, it was a simple matter of keeping my checkbook register up-to-date. Adding my husband ended up meaning more accounts and trying to keep track of what he was spending too. Believe me, that’s not easy. Actually, it sometimes took a week to make sure I had everything up-to-date and write out all those checks for our bills.
I thought getting a computer and a program to track finances would make it faster and easier and I guess it did make it somewhat faster, but also more complicated.
You see, I quickly found out that not only could computers and programs glitch, but computers could, and did, give up the ghost, effectively losing all my files for me. Both events that have happened multiple times to me. Backups helped but where my finances were concerned continuing keeping our checkbooks up-to-date was vital.
Having the paper backup has also made it easier to balance accounts now that everything is online. I don’t have to switch between screen constantly in order to check what has and hasn’t cleared. Someday I’ll get a dual monitor set up so I can have both on their own screen and can see them at the same time. Until then, the paper records are necessary.
All of which takes time, though admittedly no longer having to write out all those checks each month makes things go much faster. I can get everything done in one day now, as long as there are no glitches or I didn’t miss tracking a transaction or two. (Yes, that’s happened too.)
And yes, my tracking program does still occasionally glitch, but I usually spot it fairly quickly since I always double check the totals with my paper records. And yes, there are occasions when I spot errors in my paper records too. But balancing everything three ways makes those errors much easier to spot and correct before they cause headaches.
All in all, using this three-way tracking system means that it can still take most of the day to pay our bills and update our records each month.
What this means for writing my post is that I not only didn’t have time to type anything, but I couldn’t expend the brain power to think about what I would write. And the honest truth is, even knowing that today was my day to post, I didn’t give it a single thought until after dinner.
A couple of fleeting thoughts that did not materialize into a substantial post, or even more than a line or two. Then, by 10 p.m., I started yawning. At that point, I was useless at any attempts to put words on paper (or screen for that matter). I finally gave up and went to bed.
Yes, I made sure my alarm was set to wake me early so I could write this.
The issue then became finding a subject and getting it out in a coherent form. And watching the clock inch toward the deadline without having filled the page yet completing my thoughts just makes the whole process even harder.
Though I did actually type up a nice long document before realizing I was rambling. I deleted most of it and started over. I didn’t even want to read the jumbled mess I first typed up. At least I realized it and fixed it.
Now for my final thoughts this morning.
Well, one of my fleeting thoughts from yesterday.
You see an online friend mentioned her birthday and specifically that she is a Pisces. Now I’m going to blame this on being worn out, because it was after I started yawning, but I did not immediately comprehend who else I know who is a Pisces. Seriously, I was looking at that for a minute or two trying to figure out who else I knew with that zodiac sign.
Then, slowly it dawned on me that it’s March. Only then did it click that March 5th is only a couple of days away. As in, the other person I know who has a birthday this week.
So, happy birthday to my sister affectionately known as Dictionary.
Smile. Make the day a brighter day.
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