One a day, plus iron

For my birthday, I gave myself a fabulous gift: I called Schlock and told them I would not be finishing out the tax season.

I've spent the past four days decompressing.

Any job where you sit on your ass for eight plus hours a day without any opportunity to move is a bad job, but this was a particularly bad job, combined as it was with eye strain from computers and multiple documents that use tiny font, listless coworkers, and relentless pressure to service as many tense and anxious customers in as short a period of time as possible.

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I came out of the experience with what I've self-diagnosed as mild PTSD. Writing is actually kind of a chore. (I'm used to nobody having the slightest interest in anything I have to say.) Walking two and a half miles winds me, and my lumbar muscles keep twinging because I've lost my core strength. It's difficult to concentrate because nothing really interests me.

I didn't burn any bridges when I resigned.

Who knows, right? I might be kidnapped by terrorists wielding cattle prods! Alhamdulillah! You MUST do our taxes—or else!

I might be yanked backward in time to a Nazi death camp, where the only thing standing between me and the showers is my ability to decode a W2 under corporate supervision.

In other words, there might be circumstances under which I would consent to work again at Schlock.

Might.

So my tone over the phone, as I was subsequently contacted by each and every one of the bureaucratic overlords, was regretful: Gosh! I love you guys! Everyone is so great! I just burned myself out!

And who knows? Maybe that's true.

Well, next year, you'll only work a few days a week, said one of the bureaucratic overlords.

Ha, ha, ha. Right.

For the most part, the clients I worked with loved me. I got all five-star reviews.

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Talk about your dysfunctional business models: Schlock is like a Halloween Superstore dedicated to Uncle Sam's payday.

Will Schlock even be around in five years? I kinda doubt it.

There's a lot of competition for those IRS hostages. Chiefly from TurboTax (and if Schlock is Blockbuster, TurboTax is Netflix). But also from the dwindling number of other in-person tax prep services like Jackson Hewitt, multiple free online sites, high-end accountants, and, of course, my own alma mater, TaxBwana, which does 1.7 million returns a year.

TurboTax doesn't do in-person consultations, so no competition there. (Though one must wonder whether the operational costs of maintaining bricks and mortar are that much more than the revenue stream it yields.) And TurboTax is actually a bit more expensive for comparable online and downloadable products. But it's rooted in that ever-popular DIY ethos. And it's going after a more sustainable market.

Just contrast and compare the television commercials in which Schlock tax preparers, always depicted in identical green crew-neck sweaters, interact with middle-of-the-road Americans. Sure, there are such things as middle-of-the-road Americans, but that's an externally applied label; most Americans prefer to think of themselves as exceptional. Meanwhile, TurboTax preparers wear edgy black blazers and magenta button-down shirts as if they're dressing down for an elegant dinner party while catering to youthful folk with tattoos, piercings, and anime dance moves.

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I haven't done very much since I stopped working. Talking to other people is an effort. What, after all, could I possibly have to say that other people might want to hear?

I make myself walk the two and a half miles I'm capable of walking. Who knows? Maybe someday I'll be able to walk three miles! Or, at least, two and three-quarters.

I forced myself to finish The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny. If you look at the novel as a meditation on the aftermath of colonialism, it actually kinda works—particularly with its minor characters: the unlucky Mina Foi, the vain, self-involved Babita, the West-obsessed Dadaji. The status details and textures of everyday Indian life really sparkle.

But the main characters—the two lovers and Sonia's evil magus lover, Ilan—are mere paperweights used to keep pieces of the plot from flying away. Ilan's characterization, in particular, is irritating: Sonia's point of view is not established compellingly enough to determine why she would find this man the least bit attractive.

Plus, Kiran Desai uses Ilan to introduce a deeply lame magical realism arc—this despite bashing magical realism as a literary conceit in earlier pages of the book. (Sonia is a literature major and a writer, so the character is used as a conduit for many of Desai's theories on literature.) Was the author aiming for irony? If so, it was badly executed.

And the prose style felt syrupy. It never shifted rhythm. Momentum never built around important moments, so every moment was equally important and unimportant. Perhaps that was a deliberate choice on the author's part. I dunno.

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I sit and read in a chair in the backyard, so I can let the two surviving chickens out of their dark little coop. Perhaps my human presence counts as vigilance. Maybe my presence will keep the predators off.

The chicken gurlZ come out greedy for tortilla treats. But then they take off and hide in the bushes. Do they have any specific memory of Grey Chicken's death? Who knows? Some birds (parrots) have excellent memories, so maybe they do. The chicken gurlZ sense something, and whatever that is, it's enough to make them cower. No more strutting around the acreage! Every animal would rather be safe than free, I suppose.