Even though I pay taxes all year long (at restaurants and stores, in quarterly estimates and biannual property taxes), I don’t think much about them until the end of February, beginning of March.

Taxes are embedded in all sorts of transactions and, like a journalist’s ride-along in a tank in Tashkent not getting attention until it’s featured on 60 Minutes, taxes are not much of a personal concern — that is, until they become everyone’s concern.

Okay, so April 15^th is imprinted in our minds as a day of reckoning. Not in a spiritual sense, for whether good deeds outweigh selfish actions, but whether we’re following our country’s rules for community living – or following them well enough.

My finances are not so complicated that I could probably learn to file myself, but the prospects that my calculations need to MATCH the government’s so stresses me out that I’m happy paying a good accountant to review things.

Barely after holiday decorations are returned to storage, my tax files take a prominent place in my office. Colorfully labeled manila folders start collecting income forms that come in the mail. I’ll look at printouts of charitable contributions I made online to make sure the cause qualifies as a 501 C.

Then I’ll review different paper records and set up an Excel spreadsheet with categories of expenses and miscellaneous sources of income.

I try to break the process into small steps. I also want to leave my accountant plenty of time for his review.

This past Saturday, after finishing a deadline project, I decided I could procrastinate no longer. I checked my labeled folders and confirmed I shouldn’t be receiving any more 1099s or interest summaries.

I took out credit card statements for the past year to make sure I was accounting for any business related expense I was entitled.

The intensity of staring at a small glowing screen on my desk is something I’m used to, although my tolerance for it varies. After about 40 minutes, with the heels of my hands, I pushed myself away from my desk.

Although all my weight was completely centered on the seat of my chair, on casters, the motion of pushing myself away from my desk was easy. I found myself surprisingly ebullient over this sensation, this discovery.

While not nearly the level of fire or electricity, the idea of putting casters on the bottoms of chairs struck me as pretty cool.

What a difference there is between pushing and rolling!

At the physical level, it’s so nice to use wheels or levers or tools for rendering a heavy object maneuverable. On the energetic level…

Rolling with something rather that pushing through it is a great thing to practice.

There will always be some life situations that just purely need to be gotten through, but rolling with challenges rather than pushing through them seems like a better strategy.

It seems worthwhile to remind myself that giving myself breaks in all varieties of tasks, rolling with my feelings, rather than pushing through them, may be best for me.

Remembering that, like taking advantage of the mobility of chairs on casters, I can exercise more choices than I might limit myself to is no small thing.