Day 58-Governor Newsom imposes new restrictions

Tax time…

1/12/20. Tuesday.

10:00 – 10:30 - I’m awake, but I stay in bed – I don’t want to get up.  The dog starts barking so I go downstairs to say good morning.  She has her paws on the child gate and is wagging her tail, happy to see me.  I pet her tummy and outside we go.   This morning, she’s interested in chasing some birds who are bathing in the fountain.  They fly away and she loses interest.  Finally, she goes potty. Back inside and rotten chicken for her, coffee for me.

10:30 – 12:00 - Slowly but surely I’m creating a retirement routine that works best for me. In general, I’m pretty useless in the morning [I’m NOT a morning person], so I like to ease into the day reading and journaling. 

I read The Beauty in Breaking and have some of the yogurt, apples, and walnuts I made a few days ago.

12:00-1:30 – I write a blog post.  I listen to The Daily and What a Day while I write it.

1:30–2:00 – I have a telephone appointment with my tax man so I look over my paperwork one last time to make sure I have everything ready.

2:00-3:00 – Tax appointment. It is hard to pinpoint exactly when it happened, but cell service inside the house stopped working maybe a year ago. L. confirms there are no rooms within the house or the surrounding perimeter where we can actually have a normal phone call. D., my tax man, calls me while I’m sitting in the living room and the call drops twice.  I have to move to the garage, hold the phone in my left hand against my face (I think my face is a conduit for cell service???], and balance my elbow on the trunk of my car, while standing.  If I twist ever so slightly, I can’t hear D.  In fact, I can’t move.  Every time I look down at my paperwork, I can’t hear D. and he tells me I’m cutting out.

The preliminary totals are such that I will probably owe $800 to the Feds and nothing to the State. I don’t have $800.

This is an estimate as D. used my last paycheck stubs instead of my W2s, which haven’t come yet.  I schedule my tax appointment every January to take advantage of the early bird discount. Even though I claim “0” for withholdings, College No. 2 is a third revenue stream, beginning in 2020, and is killing me on my taxes. Yet another sign from the ‘universe’ that I should dump this job.  I’ve complained in previous posts that teaching SIX classes is the same as working a full-time job and I’m RETIRED. When I calculated the hours spent on class-prep, teaching, and grading papers for last semester, ‘time served’ averages 35/36 hours per week! Working on just three classes through College No. 1 over these past weeks has been much more manageable for me and I no longer feel like I’m on a hamster wheel – I finally have some breathing room.

Today, I find out that this third revenue stream [College No. 2] is also pushing me into a higher tax bracket which means I will, more than likely, need to ask College No. 2 HR to withhold additional funds on top of claiming 0, which I find ridiculous.

-L. leaves for work at the art studio.

3:00-4:00 – I have one of my pre-made salads and read a Money Diary.

4:00-4:45 – I take the dog for a walk and listen to Vox’ The Weeds.

5:00-6:00- I do a 1 hr HIIT full body circuit workout with 5-lb weights. I listen to New Yorker-Politics: “Lawrence Wright on How the Pandemic Response Went So Wrong.” Highly recommend and I really need to read that article.

6:00-7:00 – Shower. Lotion. Covid-19 uniform

7:00-8:00 – I braid my hair in multiple sections and listen to Organize 365. I read a little more of The Beauty in Breaking.

L. returns from work.

9:00-12:30 – I’m teaching 3 classes at College No. 1 this semester and the first day of my second Core Class is on Thursday, at 6:00.  This means I need to prepare the Syllabus and the Canvas shell.  Recall that I conducted an assessment of my hours a few weeks ago to determine how long it takes to create a class from scratch, i.e., 6 to 7 hours.  Because this class is identical to my Monday 2:30 class – the only difference is it’s held on Thursdays – I estimate that course creation will take half the time or THREE hours.  I still have to change 81 dates in the Canvas shell, as well as the dates on the Syllabus, but class content was already created.

I update the Syllabus and make the date changes in Canvas.  Then, I record the Audio-Syllabus for the Thursday class.  At this point in 2021, I’ve recorded FOUR Audio-Syllabi – I’m getting kind of sick of it.

-Upstairs and I ask L. to airdrop the Syllabus.  Because she is taking so many classes during Winter intersession, she is churning out art projects, one after the other, and is working on several assignments, simultaneously.  She airdrops the Audio-Syllabus and then shows me her latest creation(s), while explaining the expectations of each art class.  Her work is so good!  It appears that L. can create anything, in any medium…and pretty effortlessly.  Since I’m not an artist, I find these assignments overwhelming.  I think L. views most of her assignments as “baby assignments”…things she has already done before and that she finds rudimentary, similar to how I would feel if my political science teacher  asked me to write a 2-pg essay on the Constitutional Convention. You know, like, “I got this but the assignment is boring and taking up time I would rather spend elsewhere.”

I return to my office, prepare the “Welcome” email and Discussion Board, then “publish” the Canvas shell.  The class is now “live.”  I immediately follow up with the “Welcome” email blast, and attach the  Audio-Syllabus and regular Syllabus.

12:30-1:00- I check College No. 2 to see how enrollment is going for my Spring semester classes – they start on 2/16/21.  Not good.  One class has 9 students and the other class has none.  I’m pretty sure these classes will be eliminated.  It’s interesting how some things work themselves out. I put the “intention” out to the “universe” that it might be time to step away from College No. 2, and in so doing ‘manifested’ my own termination through attrition.

1:00-2:30 - L. and I watch The Wilds.

2:30-3:00 - Night time routine. Bed.