Forever Behind On Balancing My Checkbook

I have a day planner, still.  In the pouch of the front cover, I put in all the ATM receipts I get, withdrawals and deposits, out of my personal account.  I keep them there because, I promise myself, I will mark them down in my register.

I vow that even though I haven't balanced my checkbook in ... well, the last time I did it, I was in St. Louis, specifically at a 24-hour coffeeshop.  I was already way, way, way behind in marking up my register, to the point where I felt I needed to a vacation -- to physically leave Minnesota -- in order to have the headspace and devote the time to finally get down to the business of catching up on my balancing.  And it was stupid difficult.  I had mounds of ATM slips that piled up.  Some of them were so old that the ink had already faded out the dates and amounts.  Moreover, I threw in so many registers that it took a little bit of time to figure out in what chronological order the registers should be in.  I think I got myself situated to the point where I could finally grab the oldest ATM slip, write it down in the register I should have been using at that point, and keep going until either I ran out of registers or my hand gave out.  I think the former happened, but I'm glad I did as much as I could because I was at the coffeeshop until dawn started to break.

That is not to say, however, that I got caught up.  No way in hell was I caught up.  I had months and possibly a couple years that I had to do when I stopped.  And that late night/morning in St. Louis was at least six years ago.  I do not believe I have not touched the plastic bag in which I threw all those ATM slips and registers since that day.  I haven't really added onto it until, well, just now, when I finally got around to taking out all the ATM slips I piled into the front pouch of my Franklin Quest and slid it in the back of the pile of slips already in the plastic bag, and hopefully in chronological order.

The earliest slip from the pouch was from 2020.  So yeah, I am at least half a decade behind in balancing my checkbook.  The damn bag is bursting at the seams.  And there is no way in heck that I will have an accurate running total by the time I get done -- if I ever get done.  I think I remember one time when I had fully caught up from months and months of being behind where the running total I wound up with on the register was totally off from the current amount in my checking account and I said to heck with it, made up the difference, and wrote down something to the effect of, "Discrepancy" or something.

I know I will have to do it again, if only to make up for all the direct deposits for which I don't have an ATM receipt.  With it being almost definitely inaccurate after years and years of neglect, does it make sense to even start?  And by Buddha, I still say to myself, Yes, I will get around to it.  That's why I still have that plastic bag ... which, after I added all the latest ATM slips, I rested back on my desk, where it will probably stay, undisturbed, for a long, long time.