number cruncher

My friends's daughter graduates from high school this year.  She is contemplating her school choices, and answering the question "What will you major in?"

How many of you are doing what you went to school for?  I have an art degree (major area of concentration-textiles and fiber) with a business minor.  My office is in a 10 x 10 room in our house, that I share with Mike and his desk.  I would trade it tomorrow for a sun filled studio, with an eight harness loom, and a sewing machine, and stacks of fabric and yarn, and a big table for making jewelry and crafting cards.  I know I am not alone, how many people spend their days doing a job to pay the bills, and dream about what they would do if they could?

How in the world can you know what you want for the rest of your life when you are 18?  I know there are people with passion, who always wanted to be a teacher, and became a teacher, and are amazing teachers.  Or the people who wanted to be a doctor, and are helping save lives.

Mike has a business degree, and he is clearly going down that path.  He is following his dream, and I am happy to support him.  He has such a clear vision, while mine is fuzzier, and has no numbers attached to it.  His dream can pay the bills, while mine won't support a family.  So for now, we will keep doing what we are doing, and someday I can pursue mine when time and finances allow.

For now, I am a number cruncher.  I keep the books for ACES, and do payroll, and order inventory,

and manage our point of sale system at the store.  I have never liked math (I found a way out of taking a single math class in college, rather clever (or stupid....).  I took one accounting class, and didn't pass it.  (It was Fortran programming, how is that accounting?)  And now I am an acccountant.  It just goes to show that you never know what circumstance will lead you to your job.

And in February, when I am preparing our taxes to send off to a real accountant (the only time of year we hire out those services, the tax law is way beyond my abilities), I daydream over my piles of reports about the jewelry I am going to make when I am done.  While my left brain crunches numbers, my right brain dreams of what I will create when I have some free time.  But this week at the end of the day, my brain is just tired of the struggle and snuggles in to watch the Olympics, no brain required.