This will be a fairly transparent attempt to make up for not posting anything yesterday. I tried. The MSG in my thrice-warmed-over Chinese take-out finally caught up with me last night, and I ended up lounging, eyes bleary and half-closed, heart beating erratically, sleeping wife and dog and cat beside me, listlessly browsing through my RSS feeds for something, anything to blog about. I was unsuccessful. My apologies. It is disheartening to watch my readership plummet, Palin-favorability-rating-like, from a better-than-I-can-hope-for 37 to a meager 14. [insert wah-wah-wah sound here]
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Brief Interlude:
I just overheard a visitor in the lobby talking to the partners about the upcoming Presidential election. This redneck was spewing the “Barack Obama is not an American citizen” bullshit. Because I value my employment and the income it provides, I chose not to stride down the hall and take part in the conversation. But here, for the record, is the truth – provided now in the off chance that a visitor to this page might base their vote on the ravings of lying right-wing scumbag scaremongers.
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Anyway, before that ugly intrusion, my purpose with this post was to briefly reflect on a subject I have not yet expounded upon here – my job. Despite having to work with people who may disagree with me politically (see above), I truly love my job. Odd to say, since it seemed when I first chose this career path – accounting – that it would not be a good fit with the more artistic, free-thinking elements of my personality. It is a boring job, don’t get me wrong. It is repetitive and governed by strict regulations. I wear a tie and sit in my little fluorescent-lit office and fill spreadsheets and ledgers all day. People who know me well might find that hard to reconcile with the person who has, at times, been spontaneous to a fault, who adores the bohemian lifestyle, and whose interests range from literature and art to general aviation and bush flying to politics and philosophy. Why would I go into the business and finance field?
The answer is that this job grounds me. It is a vacation from my otherwise racing mind. In my personal life, my thoughts bound from one focus to another – and none are remotely related. Here I, by necessity, must follow the rules to the letter. I must focus on the task at hand. Quite the contrast, since I normally abhor the idea of rules and am generally juggling several pet projects at a time.
I did not arrange my life this way intentionally, but this is how it has turned out. It runs counter to all the choose-a-career-to-fit-your-personality (or your interests or strengths or whatever) advice that you hear in high school and college. This job is not who I am at all – and I have never felt more satisfied with my life than I do right at this moment.
Now, as autumn settles in, we are getting into my favorite part of this job – the auditing. The past few months have been more about taxes, report prep, and tying up loose ends. But now, after the close of the school systems’ financial year (the majority of my job involves auditing several local boards of education), it is finally time to get out of the office and do some fieldwork. While I am out at the various schools, I get a chance to meet and observe a great variety of personalities, which makes my work much more fascinating than you would think. I also get to be “the authority” – I am, in essence, checking their work; passing judgment on it, even. It’s a bit of a power trip – bookkeepers quaking in their boots at my approach.
So, what I hope to do in the coming months is to use this blog space as a journal in which to record and examine the quirks of the people I meet and the systems I visit (preserving client anonymity, of course). It will be a kind of sociology experiment – my observations from the audit trail (pun intended). I know – it should make for a riveting internet browsing experience.
[And my readership drops lower, and lower, and lower.]