Unfortunately, I listen to news in the morning because maybe I just need some sort of structure or routine, I guess. And if I’m going to listen to the news, it’s going to be reputable journalism — even if I have to pay for it. And so in the New York Times audio app, I heard a segment about how Americans are becoming less and less likely to be audited. Today is tax day in the US. The current administration has enacted and promises to continue enacting massive staffing cuts and, well, if there is no one left to wonder whether you are paying your taxes, you’ll likely get away with not paying them.

And by “you”

I don’t mean you.

Let’s be honest — no matter the skewed probabilities of an understaffed IRS, it’s likely those tasked with investigating who is and who is not paying their taxes does not care much at all about whether you and I are paying our taxes because whatever I owe won’t even cover the cost of the Supremely White paint strokes it would take to change that one street sign from Gulf of Mexico Avenue to Gulf of America Road and so what’s even the point of checking if we can’t do that,

right?

But there are people (men) in this country whose debts could likely make a real difference if managed with educated and intentional hands.

As I listened to the news story, bleak and unsettling as anything that has to do with money these days, I chuckled and thought of the Kurt Vonnegut quote I heard for the first time just recently,

“Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance.”

And I wonder what other flaws came before this one that necessitated he start this sentence with “another.”

And I wonder about maintenance, accountability, and innovation.

About maintenance, I wonder what would happen if I never called anyone about the attic door in the office. Bobby the maintenance man said as he moved this chain of metal and yanked that plank of wood that it’s only really an issue if the fire marshal comes by. (And for some reason, I am convinced that the fire marshal will come by before I’m ever audited by the IRS) Right, but will the ceiling cave in? We all keep working while the attic door is stuck half open. We still do our jobs. We can still reach the printer. So what would really happen? What is the consequence of this lack of maintenance, really?

About accountability, I wonder how long it would take one of my coworkers to ask me about whether I called the maintenance man about the attic door. Because the air conditioning needs maintaining (not fixing) (just maintaining) (like a check-up) That’s why the attic door needs fixing. But until something is really wrong — until it’s the middle of July in Sarasota and the A/C stops working completely and someone can say, “See! This is why we should have had the maintenance done ages ago!” but to that I would respond, who can really say that such maintenance would have guaranteed we didn’t face this problem? Most of my co-workers don’t know that this task has been handed off to me. It was handed off to me, after all, after being swept aside in the hands of another. So who is holding me accountable to fixing this, really?

About innovation, I wonder why I keep starting new projects when this project remains unfinished. In my iPhone, I use the pin feature in iMessages to save at the top the message threads that contain some to-do list item — when I do the thing, I get to unpin the message. Bobby’s unsaved phone number is one of two messages pinned to the top of my screen right now, a reminder to call him to ask him for a quote so that he can fix the attic door so that I can then call a different company — I don’t know which — so that, if I request, they can give me a quote for an air maintenance appointment and oh, by the way, did you get that attic door fixed because we won’t carry out any requests if there is chance that one of our men falls out of the ceiling while they are working

it’s just policy.

Getting to the point, then,

there’s a lot of steps to maintenance. To build something inevitably takes less time because building is the thing you do once. And it’s exciting because it’s shiny and new. Because who doesn’t love to innovate? In this age crawling with content creators and overnight stardom?

Maintaining takes longer because if you do it well enough, proper enough, with enough attention, you might have the thing you built forever.

And no one can think about forever these days.

By “no one,”

I mean me

Forever is an impossible amount of time.

Until You Know Better

Use it or lose it

Pranayama in the morning time

Pay your taxes and ask where they are going

Great Artists Steal

I’ve never even read any Kurt Vonnegut