Tag: angst

Once upon a time, taxes edition

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Once upon a time, people used to say that homeownership was a huge benefit come tax time.

At this point, I’ve been a homeowner almost longer in my life than I haven’t.  Hard to swallow that pill, but I did purchase my first home when I was 22 years old, and I’ve been paying mortgage notes almost entirely since then, with only a small gap while I was in between homes in 2017.

However, the first home, I was splitting the mortgage 50/50, so at the end of every tax season, it really didn’t benefit either myself or Jen.  We had talked about alternating years in which we would declare head of household and file 100% of the taxes on our respective returns, but it never came to fruition, and that was all at the tail end of our tenure.

It kind of helped when I was in my current digs, when mythical then-gf and I were living in sin and filing our own taxes as individual singles.  It helped me from going straight negative, and I had maybe 2-3 years where I actually made a little bit of cash back, which was a massive win considering how many years previously in which I always seemed to owe money.

Once upon a time, people used to say that marriage was a huge benefit come tax time.

I can’t really speak much to this one, considering mythical now-wife and I have been married for closing in on year, this summer.  I think in 2019 we still filed as individuals, since we were not-married for more of 2019 than we were.  By the time we filed in 2020, the vast majority of the year was spent preparing for the birth of #1 and then navigating through the coronavirus-addled world, and I can’t say that we really had a single tax return where we were a married, childless couple.

Once upon a time, people used to say that having kids was a huge benefit come tax time.

Stories of degenerate baby mamas, entrapping dumbass men who can’t be bothered to put a raincoat on, popping out and collecting children like they’re Infinity Stones, and collecting come tax time.  I’ve known some women who perhaps weren’t as degenerate, but they also weren’t shy about expressing their anticipation for taxes, due to the supposed benefits and breaks they were always subject to based on the number of children they had.

In all fairness, contrary to the tone of this post, mythical wife and I actually did have an incredible 2020 tax return.  The amount of money that was refunded to us, I had to wipe my eyes and run the numbers multiple times, because I was positive that there had to have been some sort of mistake.  But it was legitimate, and for that one calendar year, we thought that all of the things people used to say was finally coming true, and by having the trifecta of a house, marriage and kids, tax returns were about to become a fucking holiday every year.

But coming back to reality here and to the present, I’ve been a married homeowner with children for five years now, and over the span of the last two tax returns, I’ve never owed so much money to the IRS in my life.  Take 2020 and 2021’s great and okay tax returns, and they’ve been paid back with interest between 2022-2024.

I’m not a CPA or even willing to find out what tax laws and policies are in place that have been systematically fucking my household since 2020, but all I know is that when I do my taxes, the fact that I’m married, own a home, and having kids does absolutely nothing to my bottom line when it comes to filing taxes.  And I mean that literally, when I get to the point in the tax software where I enter in information about my property and my kids, the number doesn’t even flinch.  Not a single dollar saved on account of the things that once upon a time, people used to say would help one’s taxes.

I suppose marriage helps a little bit, because out of curiosity, I ran mythical wife’s and I’s numbers as individuals, and we would owed a noticeably higher debt, but like I said, my house, or my kids don’t affect a single fucking cent in my return as a whole.

The one thing that I do know is that both mythical wife and I did technically switch our jobs in the 2022 year, and I vaguely remember when I was filling out all my initial paperwork, I didn’t fill out a W-2 but a W-4 or whatever form has taken the place of the W-2.  Somewhere in my allowances, myself or both mythical wife and I clearly checked something different from what we know, and both of us are not having nearly enough deducted from each paycheck, which is the primary killer for us.

I don’t really know what I have to alter in order to stop getting raped by the IRS come tax time, so I just opted to just have a straight set amount withheld each paycheck, with the hopes that the cumulative math on my withholdings is closer or exceeds what I’ve owed each of the last three years, with the hopes that when I run 2025 taxes in April in 2026, I won’t get as obliterated as we’ve been getting over the last few.

Because relying on marriage, homeownership and kids to bail us out in April is clearly fairy tales that started with once upon a time are clearly a dead thing of the past now.

The futile pursuit of Steel Armor

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

In the original Final Fantasy, about 25% through the game, you come across the town of Melmond.  The town has been decimated by the elemental fiend, Lich, and there are tombstones and graves scattered all around the place to denote the carnage that he has brought to this continent.  Otherwise there is nothing really of importance in the town other than what’s available at the armor shop.

Steel Armor, which doesn’t sound like anything that special, but the reality is that it is one of the highest-rated armors in the entire game, quite literally viable until the very end.  Its effectiveness is reflected in its cost, which at 45,000 GP is one of the most expensive items in the entire game. 

Its availability as early as Melmond is kind of laughable, because at this point of the game the ramping up of difficulty at its worst, and 45,000 GP would require a massive amount of grinding and effort in order to afford.  And if you have any sort of meta or any team with mages on it, acquiring their spells is of higher priority, considering the importance of magic to attack enemies, heal allies, and cast Exit, that you’re looking more like needing 60,000 GP if want to mage up and get Steel Armor before you head to the Earth Cave.

By the time you get to the point of the game where 45,000 GP is no big deal, money is flowing like water.  There’s a chest somewhere in the Sky Palace that contains like 68,000 GP, and I remember thinking, wtf is this even needed for at this point in the game, because you already have most of the best equipment in the game at that point, and your white mage can heal more HP than spamming heal potions over and over again outside of battle. 

When you have money, money comes easy.  When you don’t have money, it’s an agonizing struggle, finding that bridge to where you can get to the land where you can have money.

It’s usually not worth the effort to go back and get Steel Armor, even in spite of having the airship to whisk you back to Melmond without much effort, there are comparable pieces of armor available, found in the natural progression of exploration and advancing the story, that usually also have some degree of bonus protection instead of the base armor stats.

Most teams probably aren’t going to have multiple fighters, given the expense of equipping them, and if you don’t actually have a fighter in your team, it’s a moot point because no other class in the game can utilize Steel Armor, so really Steel Armor is kind of obsolete by the time you get to the end of the game.

The point is, Steel Armor becomes this kind of metaphor of being a reward for those who are capable of putting in the hard work, managing money well, and want to enjoy the fruits of labor at an earlier stage of life, rather than waiting until much later when you have the money, to get something that’s kind of not really needed anymore.

Continue reading “The futile pursuit of Steel Armor” →

Life on hold

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I am very unhappy with the state of my life and how endlessly difficult everything is right now, and I can’t see any lights at the ends of any tunnels to give me any sense of hope. 

And I don’t feel like there’s anyone I can talk to about it. 

The irony and benefit to having a brog that nobody but me reads is that I can basically say whatever I like and know that nobody’s going to see it.  Therapy might help, but that costs money and I’m short on that too, and it perpetuates this endless cycle of shit that sucks because of something, but that something is also caused by another thing, and so on and so on.

And like I said, I don’t see it getting any better any time soon, and that just feeds into the angst over and over again.  I’ve sacrificed so much, and there’s hardly anything left, and there are some days where I’m just out of everything.

The expansions of Erris Irand wounds my soul

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Look, I know and understand that the point of any business is to grow, improve, and make money.  And I genuinely am happy for ellis island • casino • hotel • brewery for continuing to grow, presumably making more money and gaining success and foothold in the crowded Las Vegas ecosphere, but this is definitely one of those old man, it’s straying away from the charming little shithole I once knew and loved things going on, and every time I check in with what I endearingly have always referred to Erris Irand, things continue to change and stray further and further away from Erris Irand and becoming a more, miniaturized little posh typical Vegas casino with less and less character and personality with each change.

It recently came to my attention that Erris Irand is embarking on another round of upgrades, and although I’m amused that they along with other businesses I remember fondly like Battista’s are suing the shit out of F1 for wrecking shop in the city I used to once really really love, and went to at least 2-3 times a year, it adds to the melancholy mood of things changing yet again, furthering it from the specific place that I would say that nobody loved more than my big orange brother and I did.

The photos they used was deceptive in making it look like there was the possibility of upward expansion, as in building a tower on top of the existing structure, but that’s just a silhouette of the hotel behind them that I frankly don’t remember what it was called or is called now.  But that’s the only real relief I get is knowing that they’re not going to (yet) turn into some posh, metrosexual named joint, much like Imperiar Parace and Bill’s and O’Shea have all done over the last decade or so.

And although the proposed upgrades are all purposeful, and will undoubtedly help boost business, revenue and general success for the business as a whole, it’s just so, so far gone past the little locals shithole that I first really discovered back in like 2006, that it wounds me in the soul to see just how much things have changed throughout the passage of time.

Like, when I first stepped into the place, the floors were hard oiled concrete, decades of cigarette ash, spilled booze and the dreams of degenerate gamblers ground into them by the footsteps of ornery locals, adventurous travelers and, degenerate gamblers.  The sirloin special was $6.99 and came with a $5 match play coupon for table games.  Metro Pizza was buy one get one on Sundays, applicable to a single slice or an entire pie.  Their excellent house beer was a dollar a pint, if you weren’t actively gambling, and that’s if the cougar-ey bartender even bothered to take it.  There were only a handful of table games, roulette was almost never going, and they barely had enough room for a half craps table, where there’s nowhere in the city where I fared better at, earning so much in one session that I was able to get a brand new replica wrestling blet.

For years, there wasn’t a single trip to Vegas without at least one trip to Erris Irand, where I ate well, gambled well, drank well, and spent many great hours with my brother and whichever of my friends could lower their noses to realize the charm of what Erris Irand was and represented.

Frankly, I’m the only person I know that has actually stayed in the attached Sleazy Super 8 motel, twice in fact, and I have no regrets in doing such.  From what I understand, it’s now not even a Super 8 brand, and is actually branded to the casino itself.

But as is the case, no good things truly last forever, and perception is the eye of the beholder, and as much as good is what the business perceived, the change was not good to me, but like I said, I understand the business aspect, and growth and expansion and change is inevitable in successful operations, and such was the case with Erris Irand.

The BBQ restaurant grew and blew up, the sportsbook turned into a respectable setup that wasn’t just a bunch of 19” screens inside of basically cubicles.  The brewery was opened up to the public, and more tables and more slots entered the establishment.  The floors were eventually cleaned and refinished and tiled, and the dim smoky ceiling lights were replaced with actual bright and welcoming lighting.

My last time at Erris Irand wasn’t that long ago, and after a few trips where mythical wife and my friends had no interest in going, I was by myself on this trip, and I literally took an Uber directly from McCarran to Erris Irand, because nothing was going to stop me from visiting my old friend on this trip.

And it was a surreal experience walking into the side entrance, where everything was different, the air didn’t reek as much of smoke.  The bathrooms were all posh and even had branded wallpaper and backdrops, inviting people to take selfies and be shitty millennials and shitty Gen-Z’ers.  The restaurant was without all the framed artwork of warships and pirate ships and infernos, and I had to wait an inconvenient amount of time for a shift change to occur despite the restaurant being kind of empty.

The sirloin special was still unlisted and available, but it was apparent that the kitchen isn’t used to making these as they once did, as my steak came out overcooked, but not inedible, but the magic wasn’t really there this time around.  The table limits were still fortunately lower than the rest of the Strip, but I didn’t have the time on this trip to come back despite the fact that I really wanted to, with my friend who had just gotten hitched by Elvis.

But now we’re deviating even further from that, with the next wave of expansions to implement rooftop access, so people can presumably look at the Total Rewards Group’s parking lot and training facility, unless there’s plans for something to take up the giant concrete lot between Koval and Audrie, for Erris Irand visitors to stare at being constructed over the next few years alternatively.

Like I said, a lot of old man things changing rambling going on here, so I’m going to stop here before I continue to write in circles like I tend to do sometimes about the things I’m passionate about.  I won’t not go to Erris Irand the next time my travels actually take me out to Vegas again, but honestly I’m kind of over the city as a whole lately, and I just don’t have the disposable funds available to finance the gambling I’d like to do, so it might be a while, but I imagine it’ll be yet another surreal experience of seeing just how much the place has changed. 

Here’s hoping they’ll still have the sirloin special and the best hefeweizen when that time comes, and that I don’t go broke in an hour like the rest of the Strip’s casinos had done to me my last time out there.

This is why I always have worry when I skip town

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Over the weekend, mythical wife and I went out of town.  It was a pleasant trip, in spite of the fact that one reason for going was a memorial, but it was still nice to see a close friend despite the circumstances.  The other was in part to a family member’s milestone birthday, and we had a nice little lunch to commemorate.  I spent a tremendous amount of time behind the wheels of cars, and in no help from the insufferably miserable traffic conditions of the Commonwealth of Virginia, and with each visit I make there, I grow more and more resentful of the whole goddamn place and look forward to leaving.

Anyway, we get back to Atlanta after taking the early flight out which meant we’ve been up since 4:30am, and I come to discover that while we were out of town, my microwave stopped working, my Keurig went kaput, and #1 has a death rattle of a cough going on.  I don’t blame anyone for any of these maladies occurring, but it just stinks when negative things occur not on my own watch, and it feeds the general anxiety I have about leaving my home, even though I desperately need breaks and time off.

It’s not that I could’ve done anything differently to prevent shit from breaking, and everyone in care of my home did more than they really had to in order to circumvent busted appliances, but all the same I went the rest of my Sunday back home in this hazy anxious state that feels regret for skipping town, regardless of the fact that I wouldn’t have been able to prevent anything differently.

My awesome mother-in-law already gifted us a new Keurig, which she obviously was under no obligation to do, but the busted microwave sucks, because I feel like I know what the problem is (magnetron) and the part itself is not expensive, but from what I’m researching, the general consensus is to get a repairman on the job, which seemed most likely the case to begin with because I have a built-in unit, and the magnetron is almost impossible for someone who doesn’t know what they’re looking for to access.

After just a few hours back home, and hearing my daughter coughing up a lung, I took her to urgent care in order to get some medications started.  Not that I hold any resentment over it, but such eats into the small reprieve from parenting I get in the day, which means I got no real break at all, despite my fatigue from getting up at ass o’clock.

And to top it off, the sink was full of crap, the dishwasher was never emptied, and I’m just already fried and frustrated with the constant feeling that I have to do fucking everything, and by virtue of not being present at home where I can usually stay on top of the bullshit minutiae and chores, I suffer the pain in the ass of having to do it all at once in order to feel caught up to things.

It’s like, I have a birthday coming up, and I am planning a little bit of solo travel during it, but all I really want, other than for everyone to be safe and my kids to be well taken care of it and remain healthy, is to not come home to a fucking disaster zone, like it seems to feel like every time I leave the house for any indeterminate amount of time.

There’s already a minimum tolerable state that my house fails to meet on a regular basis because I just get burnt out and throw in the towel at being the only person to give a fuck about the general cleanliness of my home, and it always goes to shit every time I leave the house, and nobody but me seems remotely concerned about it, and despite the fact that I’m deserving and entitled to getting breaks too, sometimes it doesn’t seem worth it if a shitshow is waiting for me when I get back, because then any sort of relaxation and good will built up from a break is immediately dunked on by having to resentfully fix everything that went to pot in my absence.

And this is why I sometimes feel like I should just never leave home, and it’s really a fucking shitty feeling to feel.

Dad Brog (#147): Parenting will never be easy, vol. 978

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As much as I don’t like to admit it, I’ve been struggling lately in my life as a dad.  I feel like my patience is at an all-time low and just about everything my kids are doing lately is just pissing me off, mostly on account of the colossal amounts of escalating defiance and just plain lack of listening that’s going on with my four and three year old daughters.

Everything from wake-up time, free play time, quiet time, and especially bedtime are these monumental conflicts where I feel my disposition dissolving all the time, and I just end up in a state of agitation, annoyance, anger or all the above.  I don’t like it one bit, but I can’t deny the fact that I’m losing my cool over things at a very frequent clip, and I’m hoping that this is just a stage of life given the ages of my kids, and this will eventually pass and eventually emerge in a state of being that’s not as chaotic, not as frustrating, and not as resulting me being pissed off all the time.

Then again, the whole notion that challenging times will just pass doesn’t change the fact that time is passing, and then I struggle about that notion that I’m letting formative kid years of my children’s lives pass, while mostly in dour moods, which then makes me feel bad about that instead.

There’s actually a part of me that dreads the weekends lately, because there’s usually a lot of time in which I’m on dad duty alone with the kids, and I don’t always know what to do with them.  And the difference is now from when they were 2 and 1 and 3 and 2, is a whole lot more mobility, a whole lot more freedom to roam in the house, and most prevalently, a whole lot more intelligent. 

My kids are pretty smart, and are seemingly endlessly testing boundaries and limits, and doing just about everything that I’m please asking them to not do, they hardly ever listen, and I’m just left exasperated, fried and burned out on trying to figure out how to keep them occupied without having to resort to television, going outside because it’s been cold as fuck lately or something that results in a colossal mess that will make me want to slit my wrists.

Mornings have been challenging lately, because #1 has been deciding to wake up earlier than our routine generally is, and lots of mornings, she just bangs on the door and walls and makes a lot of racket that runs the risk of waking up her sister or others in the house.  I’m usually not done with making breakfast, and I’m already aggravated at knowing there’s a clock over my head at needing to get shit done lest she tornadoes up her room, and that becomes one more task on my endless list of responsibilities.

There’s like a 75% chance that #2 will either: be pissed upon waking up and melt down.  Be pissed at the top of the stairs and refuse to come downstairs and refuse to be carried downstairs, and then melt down.  Be unhappy with what I’ve made for breakfast, refuse to eat and then melt down.  Or any combination, if not all of the above.  I’ve gotten to the point where I don’t even bother to try and console beyond an initial attempt because she won’t communicate why she’s upset, and I just give up and start reading books to #1 who rarely has an issue with breakfast.

But bedtimes, they have become a vastly different type of hell for me on the daily, and frankly have become my least favorite part of every single day as of late.  You’d think that I’d be doing cartwheels at the idea of putting the kids down for the night, so I can enjoy my 1-2 hours of freedom.  But the defiance, having to wrangle and chase down the kids, get them bathed, teeth brushed, dressed and prepped, even before we get into their rooms for bedtime stories.  It’s like a last boss battle every single day, all for a payoff of the pithy 1-2 hours of freedom I get to have these days, and usually the first hour of my paltry me time is really spent decompressing as well as doing cleaning and prep-work for the next day, before I can really turn everything off and try and relax with what little time I’m afforded.

More than likely, I’m just at my burnout point again.  I haven’t really had a real break from being on dad duty in a while; I know I had a kid-free weekend a month ago, but that was away from home, mostly sequestered inside a cabin as a blizzard ravaged the North Carolina mountains, and everyone got sick.  We had to make several long drives before and after in short order, only to come home where everyone was sick, and frankly when a break is structured like that, it’s hardly a break at all.

But it just sucks.  I don’t like where I’m at right now, with how perpetually pissed off I am, with parenting.  My kids deserve better than angry dad all the time, and I wish parenting could just alleviate the pressure just a little bit off my throat to where it doesn’t feel like such an exasperating chore all the time, and more stuff I should be enjoying and relishing in spending time and watching my kids grow and develop.

The year-end post, circa 2025

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

It’s that time of the year in which I begin to look back on a year as a whole, and determine whether or not it was a “bad year” or just another year.  Not to sound too pessimistic and nihilistic than I already to and serve as just a reminder, but the idea and fantasy of “good years” seems a bit outlandish and not really within the realms of reality, at least when you look at the type of person I am and the state of the world currently.

So when I try and reflect on 2024 as a whole, I don’t have much good to say about it.  Frankly, with a few exceptions and caveats to coming unsurprisingly overarching blanket statement, 2024 was not a particularly great year.  Other than the obvious results of the presidential election and the inane bullshit that led up to it, there weren’t any epic catastrophes that I was really aware of, but the rest of the year just felt like a death by a thousand cuts kind of year, where there was just way more negative bullshit that nicked and jabbed all year long to lead to where I’m feeling beaten and exasperated with life and the state of existence now at the end of it, than had there been a lot less.

The thing is, above all else, I’ve been pondering on whether this was just a down year, or rather just symptoms of being in my 40s, where it seems like the difficulty of life jumped exponentially, from where it was in my 20s and 30s.  There’s not a day that goes by where I don’t think to myself, when did life become so difficult to where it feels like every single task in every single day begins to feel like pulling teeth?

I have this conversation occasionally with my sister and some of my similar-aged friends, but I’m curious to whether or not this is just a rough patch in all our lives collectively, or if this is something of a rite of passage for all people who hit their 40s, and things just start taking a turn for the worst more often than not.

Being in your 40s means everyone’s parents are now well into their twilight years, and in the landscapes of our lives, death’s presence grows and occupies a larger space than in our younger years.  I think about if every generation goes through this, which they most undoubtedly do, however, the generations of now and tomorrow live in a way more connected world where information is immediate and accessible, so the news, usually bad news, travels quicker, and it’s way easier now to be exposed and be aware of it all, more than it’s ever been in generations past.

Continue reading “The year-end post, circa 2025” →