Tax season is upon us: a full quarter of my inbox is made up of emails about tax forms and official documents. Yeesh.

The real let-down after the Christmas season isn’t the returns of early January or the quickly abandoned New Year’s resolutions–it’s the January 31st deadline for receiving your tax documents from your employer, which just reminds you that you have two and a half months to put off doing your taxes until it’s April 14 and you’re pleading with the TurboTax website to unfreeze and process your damn forms and oh no, you forgot about the state form.

Today’s Groundhog Day, but really, it doesn’t matter whether the furry creature sees its shadow or not. We all know it’s endless winter until the taxes are filed and the rebate check is in the mail. And if your days of being over-taxed are gone, and you’re finally paying about what you owe, then there’s no celebration, just the sigh of relief that it’s over for another year. I have yet to make enough money from freelancing to owe tax as a self-employed person, but I hope to make this a viable career option, which means I’ll have to start setting aside money quarterly so I don’t get hit with a giant bill come April 15. Please don’t let this be the year I write the government a check.

And this year, I get to do taxes in two countries. Livin’ the life!