Working 9 to 5

From the earliest age I can remember, I wanted to work as a writer when I grew up. From the time I could talk, my favorite activity was to run around "telling stories" - where I would make up fictional narrations and recite them out loud to myself as I ran around the grassy back yard. This habit continued for a long stretch of time, at least through 5th grade, when I began to channel this urge into writing such stories down instead.

All through elementary school, my self-processed goal was to become a writer. And not just any writer - a novelist. At 5, 6 years old, the practicality of becoming a novelist never crossed my mind, but by the start of middle school, the economics of writing stories for a living began to weigh me down. I decided that as a lover of books, I would become a librarian and would write fictional stories in my free time in the evening. I would clearly never get married and would have plenty of free time when I was not working as a librarian to curl up with my cats and pound away at an Apple II keyboard.

By high school, these dreams began to wane as well. I was an odd child and began to doubt that my fictional accounts of anything would have value. Perhaps it would be better to find a job with more practical value where I could still write for a living. I heard that attorneys often wrote a great deal as part of their jobs. I had little knowledge and, honestly, little interest in the legal profession, but the idea of being paid to write for a living was enticing.

I entered college as a declared pre-law student, but officially changed my college undergraduate major five times on paper, teetering between pursuing passions (e.g., history) and embracing practicality (e.g., accounting). In the end, I fell in love with taxation and officially graduated with degrees in accounting and finance. I earned my master's degree in accounting, passed the CPA exam, and worked for a large CPA firm as a tax consultant for a few years, where my favorite part of the job was writing research memos.

With little knowledge of what exactly PhD programs in accounting entailed, my husband and I moved to Florida for us to each pursue our PhDs. One of the greatest and happiest surprises of my life was discovering that a primary part of being an accounting professor was writing research papers. And that is where my profession has led me, a job that combines teaching and writing, a job that in many ways I feel is my life's calling.

I absolutely love being an accounting professor. But I sometimes have glimpses of wondering where my journey would have taken me if I had pivoted at a different point in time. What is the value of passion or practicality in a career? How much of a job should be rooted to your passion? What kind of guidance should I provide my own children on their paths?

There are no clear-cut answers for anyone. But I do know that I absolutely love to write. And am so blessed to be able to do so.