accounting
Monday is my day for accounting. I pay bills, reconcile statements, enter reciepts, and all sorts of other number matching and account keeping activities. I do this for both the business and the family budget. I graduated with a BA in humanities. Math was my least favorite subject all the way through school and I haven’t had any formal mathematical education since halfway through my senior year of high school. If someone had told my 17 year old self that I would enjoy accounting, I would have laughed.
I probably wouldn’t enjoy being a professional accountant, but I do enjoy doing the family and business accounts. I love making all the numbers match and categorizing all the expenses. I love walking into the CPA’s office with the right tax reports and reciepts. Budgeting is satisfying because there are categories for all the spending and all I have to do is make sure that we don’t over spend in any of the categories. Or if we do I make sure that we shift money from other categories to make up for the overage. I love the fact that it all stays exactly where I put it from one week to the next. It isn’t like dishes or housework that gets undone the moment my back is turned.
Not everyone feels this way about accounting. They face paying bills and managing budget with a dread that borders on fear. I can understand that because when I first began learning how to manage accounts I felt some of that dread. I was always afraid that I was doing things wrong and that the sinister IRS would swoop down upon me and tell me that I had accrued a bill so large that they were going to auction off the house to pay for it. I can’t say when I stopped fearing the IRS. It was probably sometime after the second or third time that a CPA commented positively on the organization of my accounts and reports. At some point I realized that I was good at small business and family accounting. It is nice to have something I can point to and say “I’m good at that.” It is also nice to realize that I have a set of skills that would quickly land me a job in a workplace if I chose to seek one.
With the upcoming release of Schlock book 1, the business accounting is about to get more complex. I’m relishing the coming challenge. I’m not relishing the wait until the challenge arrives. I feel like Inigo at the top of the cliff while the man in black climbs from below.
“I hate waiting.”