A Millennial Procrastinator Files Her Goddamn Taxes

The evening of April 16th. A glass of red wine desperately in need of a refill sits next to a MacBook Air open to a Spotify window playing a song meant to give the illusion that the account owner is a responsible adult capable of completing required tasks in a reasonable amount of time, but also reflective of the inner turmoil she is currently experiencing due to the fact that she is really like not in the mood to file her taxes right now.

So flamenco it is.

You’d think she’d be all about getting free money as soon as humanly possible, but nooo, she waited until there were only 24 hours left to file, and doesn’t want to risk waiting until work tomorrow where something could definitely come up and get in the way of her like “legal responsibility” as a U.S. citizen.

She Googles “Trump tax returns” and finds – nothing.

Lolololooool.

The glass is refilled with Malbec; a generous pour. She knows that Malbec and flamenco don’t necessarily go together because Malbec is Argentinean and flamenco is Spanish, but you know what, she doesn’t have time to go to the store for Tempranillo because she waited to the last fucking minute to get this done.

So she Googles “first female president of Argentina” and scrolls through a variety of pant suits with skirts and dresses in fashionable hues and wonders why over ten years later, her country still hasn’t elected a woman president and really hopes that attire wasn’t a main factor, but also can’t be sure her fellow voters weren’t just that shallow.

She contemplates rewatching Hillary’s concession speech, and decides she hasn’t had enough wine to emotionally torture herself to that degree….yet.

She refills her glass again, and back to TurboTax it is.

She rechecks all of the numbers of out paranoia because, *surprise*, she started this process over a month ago, but just didn’t go through with actually filing, because like other documents could show up in the mail, or whatever, but long story short she doesn’t trust “her from a month ago” because that bitch made some bad decisions and really hasn’t done a great job at like cleaning and other simple, menial tasks because she is a motherfucking procrastinator.

*Ughhhhh*

She’s seen better federal returns, but this year is like, deece at best. She Googles images of “Scottish castles” and fantasizes about a refund-funded vacation full of hedges and cliffs and stone walls and like reading the Brontë sisters while simultaneously brooding. She Googles images of “moors” because she doesn’t really know what those are, but knows they are crucial to all things Brontë, and stumbles upon the other kind of moors, which brings her back to Spain, and at least these taxes have a common *aesthetic*.

She finds the right kind of pictures of moors, and they are fucking turbulent and wild and open and exactly what she needs in her life right now. A follow-up search becomes mandatory for “Is heather purple?”, and indeed, it is. This leads to yet another follow-up search because she can’t remember if Winona Ryder or Christina Ricci was in Heathers, even though she should really be able to tell the difference between the two by now. A final search for “In Heathers did they kill that girl with draino or bleach?” lets her know which household cleaner she should feel the most uncomfortable around, should she ever be prevailed upon to actually clean her apartment.

The thought of cleaning is even less desirable than finishing this tax return, so goes back to the TurboTax browser, and clicks through all the acronyms for “I’m sure, just file this fucking thing already”, pausing to wonder how she owes money to a state that sends approximately 75% of their governors to jail (she’s guesstimating) and says, “Fuck it, I waste this much money on Ubers in a weekend.”

She ends the process on a final rumination of relief –

“Thank god I don’t have a mortgage, or else I’d really be fucked.”