Average Jane Must Pay!

Friday is payday, so I’m starting to look through the stack of bills on my desk and the news is not good. I’ve fallen behind again for no reason other than my own laziness and disorganization. Worst of all, I can’t find one of my credit card bills, so I can’t pay it even though I’m ready to do so.

You’d think that online bill paying and the other conveniences of modern commerce would help me, but they’re just not enough. A smart person would receive a bill, schedule the payment online, file the receipt and move on with life. I, on the other hand, let the bills mix with the other mail for a few weeks until I have time to shred the credit card offers, mortgage refinance come-ons, etc. Then I put the bills in their own pile for perhaps another week until I find the time to open each one, write the due date and amount on the envelope and then neglect them some more until money appears.

We won’t even talk about the first three quarters of estimated taxes for my business. It would take about an hour for me to gather the information and send it to my accountant to get that nightmare off my back, but evidently I’m having trouble locating that elusive hour. This, my friends, is why I went back to working for someone else. (I can’t readily explain why I’ve kept the business going, too.)

There was a time in my life when I thought that I might someday get organized and then everything would be all rays-of-sunlight-on-my-head, bluebirds-perching-on-my-outstretched-finger, flowers-blooming-spontaneously-as-I-pass. I call it the Disney theory of life organization. Too bad the whole idea is psychotic.