Start Now--Avoid The Rush

Well, it's Thanksgiving week and we songwriters have lots to be thankful for. Hopefully, you have had a really productive year, even if you didn't win any huge awards or get any songs placed. I bet you can come up with an entire list, given a little time to think about it. While you do that, here are a few ideas to make the year end a little more musical and a little less of a pain, so you have even more to be thankful for once the holidays are over.

I DID A LOT THIS YEAR!

This is probably one thing you can be thankful for. Go ahead and make a list of all you did accomplish, just to give yourself a little pat on the back and lift your mood before the onslaught of the holidays makes you forget. While you tick off each item, ask yourself were any receipts involved? Where are they? Hopefully you took any tax-related expenses and logged them into the appropriate places as well as filed them properly so you will be able to find them come IRS filing time, or sales tax time if that is coming up for you soon, too. Remember, if you could possibly do any expenditures for this year you could take as deductions, do them quick before you get so caught up in shopping that you forget and lose out on those little refundables. Make sure you file any needed forms before you go, too, so you can sit and enjoy your time off and not have accounting worries bugging you.

BE THANKFUL FOR THE EVERYDAY

Many of us forget to be thankful for things like that roof over our heads and food on the table. Even if you are going away for the holidays, few things make you forget how fun it was than coming home to a mess. If you are leaving for any time at all, set things up so you can just rest when you get back. Clear out the fridge, eat up or donate any food that looks like it might spoil before you return--a neighbor might enjoy that half gallon of milk or last couple of bananas you know will get awful if you are gone a week, and you will give yourself a little lift knowing you brightened someone's day. Wash your dishes, do the laundry, and set your email newsgroups to no mail or put it on digest so your accounts don't get swamped in your absence. Make this more fun by putting on at least one of your demos and singing along, or thinking about playing the instrumental part if you don't write the words yourself. If you don't have one already, look into one of the really huge free accounts like Yahoo! or Hotmail and switch your email address to those while you are gone if you don't want to miss any posts, or have your account bounce mail if you get too busy to check it while you are on vacation. For that matter, you might even try forwarding some of your old stuff to one of those large accounts, just in case, so you don't lose anything--I know my email account has an obnoxious habit of erasing posts I don't get to, even if I have it set to not do so. If you have dialup, too, make sure you have unplugged your computer before you leave and hook up the answering machine or forward your calls if you need to--it would be awful to come back and find you'd fried your modem in your absence in a nasty electrical storm.

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