La Bene Vita

Self Sundays

I updated the contents of the Biography tab of my Portfolio and the introduction to this blog today.

Work:
At the music school, we wrapped up 2025 versions of all our logs, schedules, checklists, etc. and prepped 2026 versions. We closed the books for December and for 2025.

2025 was a terrible year for the school's profits.

Reasons:

- Our 7-year-old A/C died, and HVAC systems have doubled in price since we installed the last one in 2018.

- Our money guru had a stroke and some mini-strokes last year. She was out a lot, but also, she made some key mistakes and/or failed to catch some of my mistakes that she ordinarily would have caught through routine processes and procedures. It was unlike her, and since neither she nor I knew what was happening to her brain before the big stroke, neither of us thought to question anything. I accidentally left some social media ads for time-bound events way beyond the event dates, and she saw the charges but didn't ask me if I was overspending on purpose. I overspent my January ads budget by triple the budget amount! Then it happened again in the spring.

- I paid a good-for-nothing digital marketing company (handling Google Ads) way too much for way too long, and I'm pissed at myself over it. I would have never hired them in the first place - the rep gave me a used-car-salesman vibe, and I have a very low tolerance for that vibe. But this company bought out my former company (I LOVED them), so I didn't see it as hiring a new company. But it really was. And they sucked. And since I've had a bad PD (Parkinson's Disease) year, I was so tired most of the year that I struggled to keep up. The point of a third party marketing company is to take the monitoring requirement off my plate. I finally fired them in November.

- A scammer posing as an employee sent an email requesting a change to her direct deposit bank account. I fired it off to the money guru without looking closely, so I didn't notice that it wasn't the employee's typical email address, nor the minor errors in the email that she would never make. The money guru didn't notice, either, and proceeded to collect the new bank account information, over email, and process the account change without a physical signature or verbal discussion. She later said she wondered about some of the employee's weird questions (like when she gets paid - an employee since 2010). Soooo... the scammer walked away with the paycheck, and we had to pay the employee's paycheck again.

- I was unhappy with the way our former payroll processing company handled the scam situation, so I switched to a local HR company. They're actually cheaper, monthly, and they do more - they withhold, file and submit all the local municipality taxes*. However, we had a one-time onboarding cost with the new company, and we had to adjust our tax payment timing permanently to an earlier date (a cash flow thing that required an influx of cash that we won't see back until the day we close our doors forever.)

*Other states collect state taxes and distribute to the municipalities, but in Ohio, towns collects their own revenue directly, so Ohioans file federal, state, and local returns. Accountants hate Ohio! In a small business, we have to send filings and withholding to Every. Single. Town. where any of our employees live, plus the town where the business is located. Twice (in 16 years) we've made filing errors or missed a deadline where the fine was higher than the withholding - example, we paid a fine of $150 for a late $11 withholding payment for an employee living in the tiny town of Johnstown, Ohio.

Health:
For the last year or more, I've struggled with energy due to Parkinson's symptoms and three conflicting drugs: two stimulants (for ADHD and Parkinson's) and a sleep aid. It's a constant balancing act trying to get enough sleep despite the stimulants, without overdoing it on the sleep aid and feeling sleepy all day. I'd talk more about that today, but I'm too tired. So I'll save that for another Sunday. Suffice to say, my energy level is not helping me keep up.

I've talked about myself enough for one day.

On a related note, "Self Sundays" sounds so stupid. I'm taking renaming suggestions based on the description in my blog intro and/or the dribble I fed you today.

Whatever. I met my goal and then some.   But Music Monday tomorrow will probably be more interesting.