Guest Author Kayla B. - "TINSTAAHA - There is No Such Thing as a Happy Accountant"

NOTE - This blog was written in the back of a taxi cab a few months ago after a particularly busy and annoying day.  Since writing this, Kayla has gotten a new job (outside of the public accounting world) and is quite happy (so far).  It gives hope to all of us out there who bitch about our jobs on a regular basis...like hey, maybe we can have a happy ending too!

So here's a little background on me - I am a tax accountant and it's busy season. I actually chose this profession (which, at this point in my life, I am desperately trying to figure a way out of).  When I say chose this profession I don't mean I had to pick a major my junior year in college and I loved math so voila. I mean I thought my accounting class in 10th grade was easy, and decided to run with it, starting with classes at the community college in high school, early admittance to the business school, accelerated college classes, internships, my masters in taxation, and a full time job when I finally graduated.  So what I'm getting at is after all that time something should have told me to get out. Working 60hrs a week in college? No problem! When I first started my job out of college I worked for seven weeks straight without a day off. That's 49 days straight in the SUMMER. And yet still, five years later, two moves back and forth within the state and two companies later I am still doing this job. I really should know better by now but I'm still here, and I'm not at all sure why.

Anyway, as though that were not enough of a rant, this is what I really want to complain about: how much of my life I lose when I get sucked into work. I'm not talking about missing dinners with friends or happy hour on friday. I'm not even talking about birthday parties, weddings, or showers (because yes, I've had to miss those things). I'm talking about how paralyzed I become when I am working like crazy and I have to buy more underwear on my lunch break beacuse I haven't done laundry in weeks. I'm talking about how I get an eye twitch for months at a time because I'm averaging 3-5 hours of sleep a night for weeks straight. I'm talking about how anti-social I become where even if I do get to leave work at a normal hour and force myself to seek human interaction beyond my co-workers how I actually clam up and am unable to talk about anything except how much I hate my job and I mostly sit in silence and quietly sip my drink, waiting for the time that is deemed appropriate for me to go home and try to sleep. And when I do get home I can't sleep because I am still running numbers through my head and when I finally fall asleep I have nightmares about excel not calculating properly. Its sickening.
 
I don't really have a solution other than getting a new career, but what is frightening is that I don't really know what I would rather do that wouldn't require me to go back to school or take a big pay cut. And despite all of these hours that I work, I've somehow managed to become comfortable.  It's all quite depressing.