Monday arrived like other days off, but with none of the incidental clutter that would tip you off to my being employed.
My computer-and-bento-toting backpack no longer waits patiently in the living room for me to take it for its next walk to and from work, but sits forlornly in a dark corner.
Do I need to thaw or cook anything for tomorrow? The artifacts of routine utility are non-sequiturs, ballast to be cast over the side.
I got more of that when I started ramping up to get my taxes done.
For years, I’d been going to the local tax office, where I input numbers into a computer at the direction of one the extraordinarily kind and helpful people that are the norm for Japan’s tax agency. Last year, I was instructed how to do it on my phone and told I could do it from home.
“Gee, that would save me the 30-minute walk,” I thought, until I started digging through the endless procedures for getting electronic links to insurance deductions and the byzantine explanation of applying for the mortgage-balance deduction, that I still don’t understand, when I’ve already got the forms written out and ready to take with me.
Continue reading Unemployed: Day 1
