block 39 of 7501 2019-2021

Let’s pretend you love pandas. A crazy love for pandas.Your zoo just acquired a panda. You go to the zoo, you’re so excited - it’s all you’ve ever wanted - but the panda is hiding. He’s shy.How do you get him to come out? Yell profanity at him? Kick him? Crush him?Please don’t kick the panda.You’d wait. Quietly. You’d wait until they make you leave. You’d come back the next day and wait. Maybe you’d bring him food (let’s pretend this was ok). Maybe you do something cool in front of him that he’d want to join. Like a slide. Maybe you bring a slide to the zoo.Day after day. You’d bring food, you’d pace, you’d slide. You’d hope.Eventually, he’d come out. You’d see him. Bit by bit he’d come over to you.Slowly, slowly you’d make friends.And you’d realize just how amazing he is. And how amazing you are because he likes you! You get along and do great things together.Riding into the sunset on your panda.Your writing self is a shy panda.You must nurture your writing self, the parts of you from which your brilliant writerly craft emanates.That part needs help. That panda.We all - especially writers - have two parts, two beings. Two Yous.There is the You that opens the mail, brushes your teeth and puts periods at the end of sentences. Let’s call this You the Ant.Then there is the You that wanders. That daydreams. The one that follows clouds, wonders at meaning and yes, writes. The PandaThat second You is shy. He’s sensitive. He needs love, comfort, quiet, inspiration, purpose and he needs the first You to protect - not overrun - him.Given those things, he will be amazing. Like a panda!Lacking those things, he will hide.He hides and because nature abhors a vacuum, the ant steps up, takes over - that is what he does - and you're stuck opening mail, brushing your teeth and going slowly mental because you can’t brush your teeth your way to a novel.Right now your panda is hiding and you’re crawling with ants. Stop them. Stop opening the mail. Stop thinking you’re a failure. Just ignore the ants. Or better yet, give them a task, ants love a task. Like knitting. Lots of writers knit. I don’t know about ants.While they are busy knitting, sit in stillness and expect nothing. Absolutely nothing. But know the panda is there, hiding.Expect nothing. And be ok with it anyway.While you’re expecting nothing, write a few things. NOT your important work. Write exercises. There are a million books of exercises. Find one.The panda is starting to peek at what you’re doing. Ignore him.(I define words. It’s wonderful. And endless. What does heart mean? What about stairs? What about pain? What about cave? What is a mouth? Loss?)Do exercises. Again and again.Don’t expect anything. Don’t seek anything.The panda is watching. Interested.Bring panda food. Pandas like self-praise. I keep a file of all the nice things people have said about my writing. The panda wants to get into it.Exercises give you a railing. Something to grab. Done regularly, they also give you routine that takes and gives you power and - most importantly - releases the ant from responsibility (he is tired, even with the knitting).Do exercises. Don’t expect anything except that you will sit down each day and complete an exercise.You have all the time in the world. Bad writing done on time is still bad writing.Wait for the panda.Slowly, patiently, when you’re ready, get back to your work. Write a paragraph. Or something simple.Then stop. Walk away.If the panda comes out to look at the work, give him space.Do it again tomorrow. And again. Your panda will emerge and he’ll stay.Eventually, he will engage with you. And together you will be amazing.I faced tremendous writer's block earlier this year tied to deep feelings of insecurity and worthlessness. I wrote exercises. Exercises don’t matter. It was easy. I contemplated a wall. And turned it into a very good piece of writing.It was self-nurture.Steinbeck wrote a letter to his best friend each day before settling into writing East of Eden. For The Grapes of Wrath, he used a journal to himself, it didn’t work as well. He needed nurturing from an audience, a warm, embracing audience.If you feel anxious, return to exercises. If the exercises make you anxious, do different ones.Nurture your second self, your writing self. The one that dreams and wonders. The exceptional, exceptional you.At the end of the day, put him away and go brush your teeth.He’ll come out tomorrow. I promise. As long as you don’t yell at him.

I used to laugh at the concept of writer's block as a kid.  I was big into journaling and never thought in a million years I'd wake up without something to say.During high school, I had a gaming blog where I shared World of Warcraft 3v3 strategies and self-deprecating monologues from my diarrhea-plagued adolescence and wildly entertaining life as a social outcast.  My blog had ~10,000 daily readers and was the most popular Mage strategy blog on the Internet.  I wrote every single day.Right before I left for college, as I was in talks with the owner of the website (RIP GameRiot) for a paid salaried position to continue bringing in traffic, and my parents found my blog (still no idea how) and spent several hours calling it garbage, rebellious, a waste of talent.  My writing style at the time was very aggressive and very crude and my perspectives on the world were overly critical of others and intended to be read as obscene and entertaining.  What can I say, I was an angry kid.  Still, their criticism of the thing I poured hours into every day and from which had developed an audience, crushed me.  They insisted that I stop immediately, and if I continued (or tried again under a different pseudonym), they would withhold any and all financial help in regards to college.Needless to say, I stopped writing, quit playing World of Warcraft, and found myself on a rehab trip canoeing 320 miles through Florida to the Gulf of Mexico a year later.When I returned, I knew I wanted something different for myself, but I was still very apprehensive to start writing again.  I felt like it had been so long since I'd picked up the pen, and I had no idea where to start.Enter scene: Rap.I'd always loved music, had been playing classical piano since I was five, taught myself how to beatbox (fairly well, I might add) in high school, and the rap songs that I loved the most often combined the two—heavy hitting drums with ambient, dark piano melodies.In love with the music, I started paying attention to and eventually studying the rhyme schemes layered on top.  I listened to rap for hours, staring off into space while trying to follow the words and where the emphasis was placed.  In my typical fashion, I started to rewrite the lyrics so I could better see where and how rhymes were being put together.  And then I started to try myself.  And as if kidnapped by the artform itself, I abandoned everything and decided I wanted to become a rapper.I wrote raps in the school library.  I wrote raps in class.  I wrote raps in my dorm room and on my phone while walking to the cafeteria and in a notepad I carried around with me everywhere I went.  I wrote about my family, my town, all these things I had never really shared before suddenly appearing on the page in front of me. I decided I was going to make an album.Words had never come so fast to me.  I was writing nonstop.Positive the flow of inspiration would never end, I preemptively titled the project, "Writer's Block."  I would never run out of things to say, I thought.For 6 months, I worked on it relentlessly.  I abandoned any social life I'd once had.  I said goodbye to my old friends who still wanted to smoke and drink.  I broke up with my girlfriend, positive that I'd transfer schools the next semester (and I did) to move to Chicago and pursue my dream.  I put everything I had into it, ruthless about getting my first musical project right.When summer hit, I worked as few hours as possible mowing lawns, and spent the rest of my time in my bedroom closet back home.  I made myself my own recording booth, with a bed sheet surrounding a studio mic I bought.  I had my laptop balanced on a stack of clothes to my right, and when I closed the door to achieve perfect silence, the closet in the summer became a bikram yoga studio.  In the morning, I bobbed my head to a new instrumental and wrote a new song for anywhere from 2-4 hours, took a break for lunch, and in the afternoon recorded what I'd written.  The recording always took longer.  Often times, I would start at 1pm and not finish until 5 or 6.  I wanted every line to be as perfect as possible, and if I couldn't get a string of them perfect, then I'd record each line individually and piece them together later on.That was my daily routine for 3 months straight.When the summer was over, and I was getting ready to transfer colleges and move downtown Chicago, I decided I could record forever so I would call the project finished on the day I moved.  I packed up my things, drove downtown Chicago, set up my studio in my bedroom and never felt the same about rap again.  The project was done.  I didn't want to rap anymore—at least, I couldn't get myself to do it.  I tried over and over again, but nothing felt right.  The project was done, and suddenly I felt the urge to return to long form writing.  I wanted to return back to my childhood dream of writing a book.  I thought about starting another blog.  Rap, as it would turn out, was nothing more than an elusive and mysterious path that had allowed me space for self-therapy, an outlet to work through a lot of my issues and frustrations with the world and my family so that I could write from a better and more honest place.My Writer's Block, as I later discovered through a plethora of reflection, was not so much a single moment of declaration from my parents to stop writing, but rather an all-encompassing emotional state that I needed to face and work through in order to set free a better and less angry author.TL,DR: Try Rap/a different form of writing and see where it takes you.

Spend less time using your blocked Internet to ask questions on Quora, andTravel back in time to when there was no curfew and you were playing Super Mario Kart, and instead, fill out your exam form.

H&R Block is a business. Basic Forms are easy, require less time and less expertice. Thus, they cost less. As forms increase in complexity, they require a tax pro with more education (thus more expertise) to complete, thus a higher cost. Several forms require more “Due Diligence”, meaning the tax pro must interview the client and determine if that tax credit/deduction meets the IRS rules. Those form require a comprehensive understanding of the tax law and the ability to determine what is happening with the client.Tax laws are very complex. There are volumes of books filled with tax law, court rulings and classes on handling certain transactions and situations in life. How could they all be priced the same?

Maybe that’s the company’s procedure!