Filed Life

It's tax season! While this usually inspires fear, loathing, hatred and confusion, this year is a little more interesting. Most years I have three forms to worry about: the one indicating income and taxes deducted, the one with my RRSP contribution statement and the remaining student loan interest (last year for that! Yay!).

This year though it was two jobs, two sets of RRSP forms, the tax form and other sundries. Moving twice and having two jobs last year made things ... confusing. I think I found almost everything (except for an RRSP form dammit).

In finding all these bits of paper, I purged my old files. I had tax returns going back to 1995. Not a biggie but stuffed in all those papers were a few things of note:

1. Cards, notes, tokens etc from ex-girlfriends (before the had the prefix appended of course). A tad depressing, but also a good reminder of the times that were better than the end.
2. My official censure notice of one of the "bad ol' days" of a former employer. At the time it threw me for a loop. Long story short, I was told I had a week to deliver something that should have been a month, it was critical to the business and there was a bug in the code. One bug. My boss at the time threw me to the wolves. It said I didn't take the time to test, that I didn't follow written standards (I remember asking where these were as I had never seen them. That did not help my case) and that my work was incomplete. This was dated two months after my annual review which stated I had "exceeded expectations" in all but two categories (and those I merely met). Looking back on it now I should have quit right there and then. I kept that notice to identify the precise moment in time I turned into a bitter curmudgeon.
3. My old school papers. Yes some of them were official (I kept the one showing I was one Fine Arts class short of a BSc Computer Science) but I had found some of the stuff from my college radio days. No pictures (I don't remember having my picture taken in those four years) but the radio guides, posters etc. The Rock and Roll years.

Mugged in Memory Lane nearing my fortieth.

So what's left is to do the actual taxes. I won't worry about the missing RRSP: I'll request a new form and do it in next years taxes. What with bonuses, profit share and purchase plans, I'm going to need the break with the new job.

Provided no one throws me to the wolves of course.