From the Why Does This Shit Always Happen To Me File.

I dread this time of the year.

You'd think as the son of a CPA and coming from a family of CPAs and having at one time considered a career in CPA'ing, I'd have some affinity for accounting and financials and such.

I don't.

Apart from my wife, I may be the world's worst record keeper.

Moreover, I dread looking over the paystubs from last year and realizing I didn't make as much money as I should have. This stems from many factors.

The gigs that got booked and then mysteriously got unbooked.

Jobs that went to junior writers, you know those pesky 43 year olds.

And of course, the obligatory lowering of my day rate...

"Sure I can be flexible. I wouldn't want my exorbitant fee to impede your CEO's plans to buy a new yacht."

To make matters even worse, earlier this year the hard drive on my computer crashed. And with it went all my elaborate financial record keeping, such as it were.

So now I'm dependent on paper. And as you can see from the correspondence above, even that is not of much help.

The mauled envelope is actually a perfect metaphor.

You see, not only does the government take a bite of my paycheck, you know for important things like a Mexican Wall.

Now, it appears the postal service, aka the government, is taking a bite out of the paper that documents how the government has taken a bite out of my paycheck.

FML.