The Fanstastic Ms. Fox

The biggest barrier I face in doing anything significant is "being overwhelmed." It dogs me in business, art, sometimes in relationships, and it's also been the biggest outstanding obstacle to resolutions.

It's clear that I can do some pretty impressive shit (Satirical Politics, CFS referendum, Transition, Art, Writing, The Switch) and most this means engaging in giant complex tasks. So how do I beat the inertia and fear? Breaking things down into manageable steps, and pushing what can be done later completely off of my plate for today, and next week or next month, and as long as it takes to just concentrate on the stuff in front of me.

So the idea here is to keep it simple and high-priority.

I divide the year up into ten parts. It's a kind of astronomy meets traditional calendar religion meets film kind of thing (if you get the last reference, you're my kind of people!). And I use this to incrementally increase my targets.

1. Jan 1st thru Imbolc
2. Imbolc thru Equinox (Ostara)
3. Ostara thru Beltane
4. Beltane thru Solstice (Litha)
5. (break) Midsummer thru July 1st - time to reflect, alter and reconsider
6. July 1st thru Lammas
7. Lammas thru The Equinox (Mabon)
8. Mabon thru Samhaine
9. Samhaine thru Yule
10.  (break) Yule thru January 1st

I have four resolutions and three of them have incremental benchmarks. Each "tenth," I pick two targets to move their benchmark up a notch. This gives me a little wiggle room in case things prove challenging.


Tasks:

1. Pack a Lunch

I've done a pretty good job of becoming frugal over the last few years. I can live well for not a lot of money. But I spend money eating out when I don't need to - and when I don't want to. Now, when I'm eating at home, I can cook like a champ. But I don't take it with me. Time to do better.

Goal: Pack a lunch. As in a meal. Not just a granola bar.
Benchmarks: 1x/week, 2x/week, 3x/week

2. Get up and go Outside

My mental health, sleep and pretty much everything else improve when I get up and go outside within an hour of waking for at least thirty minutes. If you are not a home-based entrepreneur (or parent), you may not realize that you can get up at a reasonable hour and have what looks like a productive day on paper without leaving your house until after dark. This is not good for me. I get cranky and weird. So, I need to fix this.

Goal: Get up and go outside within one hour waking, staying outside for at least half an hour.
Benchmarks: 3x/week, 4x/week, 5x/week
 

3. Analog Hour
This one's about mindfulness, relaxation and all kinds of good stuff. I can pull this off in transit. I can do it socially. But I'm not good at being on my own. Instead, I have an ingrained habit of staring at a screen. It started in my youth as a way of disassociating. At the time, it might have been a good idea seeing as the combination of bullying and dysphoria drives other people trans to worse ends. Still, it needs to go.

Goal: Spend one hour on my own with the computer closed. Not screwing around on my phone. Not watching TV. No "screen time." Unless it's dialing a phone for a nice chat.

Benchmarks: 2x/week, 3x/week, 4x/week


4. Actor's Accountability
This is all the rage among actors, as self-directed professionals (that are known to be a little... flaky). You meet. You plan. You do better. And if you don't, you know it probably was outside of your reasonable locus of control.

Goal: Every month, I will meet with other actors to plan out career foundational. The first month will be setting up the meeting.
Benchmarks: There's only one.
 

New Rules

1. Posture
After recovering from neckstrain from hell, I have found that oneofhte muscles in my arm is partially paralyzed. It's weak and inhabiting my ability to do stuff. This probably comes from interactions with someone I used to date. It might from the time I got thrown at that play party in 2010 - the time I was saved from breaking my neck (or, indirectly, getting irradiated at Fukushima) because I turned my arm into an "S" shape? Well, I also hit my head, which snapped my neck back, but I didn't think about it at the time. Or it might have been more recent - from picking up my date and wanting to free up one hand if you get my drift, and just carrying too much load. The leading hypothesis is that my vertebrae are probably sandwiching a nerve - it's hard dot tell. On reflection, it's most likely a bit of both.

Also: my posture sucks. I don't want to wind up in a hunch when I'm eighty. And I look great when my posture is good.

The rule then: pick one: when on my cellphone / checking email / checking my reflection or seeing my shadow - I check my posture.

2. Don't lend money

In reserve:

These are important, but, in the interests of not feeling overwhelmed, didn't make the cut. I will revisit these later:

Illustrating part of the recent statements of Warren Buffet:

Both the US and Canada consider investments to be a special kind of income. In Canada, if you make $200,000 a year in wages or salary, you pay about $62,404 to the Federal Government, and about $22,500 provincially, for a total of $84,904, leaving you with around $125,096

But if you own a corporation that makes $200,000 and pays all profits in dividends? It pays 16.5% of its profits to the CRA ($33,000), and then pays you $167,000, which is taxable at 50% ($83500), on which you owe only $15478 Federally and $5797 provincially. A total tax bill of around $54,275, leaving you with $145,725 or so.

At that income level, for owning rather than working, you get an extra $20,629 a year... to start.

Plus, if the corporation lost money last year, you can claim those losses against this year's profits, reducing the total tax bill. If it loses money *next* year, you can sometimes claims those losses against this year's taxes. If you have money in a Tax-Free Savings Account, that's not taxable.

Incorporated or not, you also have business-related expenses. Taking clients out to dinner to talk shop? Half of it counts as a business cost. Home internet? It's a business expense. Cell phone? As long as you have a land-line, it's a business expense.

All this is totally legal and not at all "sneaky" as far as the CRA is concerned. When we start talking sneaky-but-still-legal, there are a lot more options to save money.

Also, many (taxpayer-funded) subsidies are only available to corporations. Not sole-proprietorships or partnerships.

So maybe you'll start up your own corporation? Maybe not. Incorporation costs about $5,000. And the taxes are about $1,000 a year. More importantly, if you're a tiny (perhaps worker-owned) corporation, making below the $50k-per-year level, the numbers work out so you actually pay *more* tax for owning rather than working.

This, my friends, is how we maintain a class system.