Why Tax Day is the Best Day, If You’re Doing the Work You Love: From the Department of Making Money, Living the Dream

smileyToday, many of us are scrambling to complete (or file an extension) and pay our Federal, State, and City income taxes here in the United States. It’s often a time of moaning, keening, and kvetching.  But I’m thinking a good many of us need to celebrate.  We owe taxes.  That means we made money.  And if we’re doing the work we love, then we’re the richest people in all the kingdom.

I’m proud to pay taxes on my business. I’m a “real” business.  Years ago, I walked along a beach in Northern California, surf pounding as I fled my crazy litigating lawyer life.  I longed to be a writer and a free person, who could walk on beaches on a Wednesday.  It seemed as frivolous as wanting to run away and join the traveling circus, or to feed all the baby seals in the world by hand and sing Joni Mitchell songs to them in a low, fishy voice.  But today, I’m paying taxes on my “business,” a business so rock-solid-real, so black as coal in the bottom line, that even the IRS wants a piece of my action.  Wow.

I’m paying a mortgage from income I make writing, speaking, and coaching.  It’s awesome.  I’m helping to pay the mortgages of others who work for me, though, granted, if they’re depending solely on me, they may be living in very tiny houses or designer straw huts.  And through my tax “contributions,” I am helping to build and restore roads and bridges.  I am helping to fund disaster relief.  I’m helping to pay for clean air and the defense of the freedom of our country.  Who knew that writing poetry could be so important in the economic scheme of things?  But that’s where I started writing and writing has taken me here.

The government relies on me, I tell you.  They let me know quarterly that they would greatly prefer to receive my estimated taxes.  They may have considered writing a “hobby” at first, just like my clucking relatives, my condescending colleagues and the upstanding charter members of the “be realistic club” aka the naysayers of the Universe, but today the government authorities are willing to hop on board my gravy train.  Hobby, schmobby, they want their loot now.

Your Dreams Are an Unending Source of Abundance

If you’re already living your passion or you’re looking to find it, remember your dreams are an unending source of abundance.  Because you will always want to expand your passion and because your passion will always give you more energy—you have the birthright of exceptional productivity.  And that means money, honey. You will have the ability to take care of your family and put edamames on the table, organic edamames, because you’re just so keen on living now that you want to feed the light.  And that means being able to pay people to help you put these dreams into the world—which feeds their dreams, their economy and their families. It’s the physicist’s butterfly effect.  Living your dream in Hoboken, New Jersey spits out karma, connections, and cash which tilts the world into a sweeter direction until honey pours into the streets of villages you can’t pronounce in countries you don’t visit.

I celebrate Tax Day.  I am making money doing the work I love.  I am paying my bills and paying homage to the sacred within that inspires my talent.  It’s not loveor money with me.  It’s the big both and that’s a bright reason to be grateful.

If you’re self-employed or work for a company you adore, and you owe taxes today, it’s time to celebrate. You’re a devotee of meaning and joy, and a brick in the temple of our national economy.  Sure the IRS takes a chunk out of your disposable income, but not doing work you love takes a chunk out of your time on earth. I’d rather pay taxes, than pay the toll of not having my own business, my own true way of making a living, and the privilege to express and contribute my message and work in the world.

Sure I’d rather go to Bali or buy a wardrobe of cute Be Present yoga clothes with what I pay in taxes.  But I’ll pay the price.  It’s so cool.  I’m a cash-flowing writer and speaker.  I’m a vortex of industry, a profitable business.  I contribute to the economy of the world.  My dreams have gone this far.