Clouds and silver linings

Realising you're in the wrong job should, ideally, be a liberating experience. In theory, it should be the first step in moving on to work that's better suited to your talents and passions.

In practice, it's likely to send us into a tailspin at first. Finally paying attention to all those niggling doubts, the continuous low-level boredom you could never explain, the lack of enthusiasm for anything relating to your work, the tendency to suppress any negative thoughts and emotions about your career in case they interfere with your job performance... clearly you knew it deep down, but rather than being a liberating experience, it can initially seem like you're on the fast road to misery. You start to regret, most bitterly, the time you wasted following a path that you were never going to enjoy or feel fulfilled in. You regret the times you mistakenly told yourself that it would get better, if only you would just try harder, work harder, or stop expecting so bloody much all the time. Most of all, you simply regret the amount of time that has passed before you realised you had to get out of that job.

However, they say every cloud has a silver lining. In my case, my job was both the cloud and the silver lining. Training to be a chartered accountant, while dull, does teach you things you'd never learn anywhere else. Like ways to minimise paying tax, for example (legally, of course!) and what all those strange and complicated finance and business terms actually mean (they usually mean something quite simple, so hell knows why they use words that make it seem strange and complicated...) You learn how companies maximise profits and drive down costs, and about financially efficient uses of capital and resources. One can even apply some of the principles they've learned to their own situation. Which, of course, is no bad thing.

The other silver lining is that working as an accountant enabled me - as with any job - to slowly build up some savings (once I'd come up with a financial plan in January 2008, as detailed in the previous post). I tried to think of accountancy as a means of financing my future career change.

Perhaps the silver lining is small, but it's a silver lining nonetheless. And who knows - the knowledge and skills gained from the past few years may well come in useful one day. It may not have been "wasted time" after all.

The author James Allen observed back in 1905:

"If circumstances had the power to bless or harm, they would bless and harm all men alike, but the fact that the same circumstances will be alike good and bad to different souls proves that the good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind of him that encounters it."

Despondency and regret over past or current circumstances is easy: I admit I've fallen into that pit in my darker moments. I think all career-changers do at some point. Ultimately, however, it doesn't serve us: those regrets won't solve or change anything. We still have to keep moving forward with life rather than let those regrets hold us back.

As Allen noted in the above, "the good or bad is not in the circumstance, but only in the mind of him that encounters it." I will try to bear that in mind next time I start regretting becoming a chartered accountant.

Back to the Beginning

Now that the blog appears to be up and running - and now that I've figured out how to work it - I suppose I should explain a little bit about me and how I came to be where I am now. The story starts ten years ago - when I was 17 years old....

....and choosing my A-Levels. For any readers from the US, I am not sure what the equivalent is (I think some countries do the International Baccalaureate which is supposed to be the equivalent), but in the United Kingdom, if you want to go to university, you spend the two years between the ages of 16 to 18 at school or a further education college studying for your A-Level exams. These determine which course you study at university - and indeed, which university you study at - which in turn determines the job you do. So when you're about 16 or 17, there's a lot of pressure on you to perform in the chosen three or four subjects that are supposedly going to map out your entire future from now to eternity.

I had a hard time choosing which subjects I wanted to do, truth be told. There wasn't anything that I particularly wanted to do with my life at that stage; although I liked the idea of studying for A-Levels and going to university (and experiencing student life of course). All I knew is that I loved writing, reading fiction and psychology books, but I was also good at sciences and maths. So in this confused state of mind, when my parents plotted that I study for an Economics degree and go into the world of finance - "because humanities subjects lead nowhere and finance pays so well!" - I didn't object, despite having no prior knowledge or interest in Economics. So it was determined that I do Economics (parents' choice), Maths (my choice, but one that would please the parents), Further Maths (ditto) and Physics (recommended by some idiot careers advisor because "it complements Further Maths and universities look highly on it").

In hindsight, I should not have listened to any of them: for starters, it turned out that university admissions tutors really didn't care whether I'd done Physics or not. I was hopeless at Economics, barely managing to scrape a pass in all the tests I was set even with my best efforts. I had no interest in the subject and simply couldn't get my head round any of it. I spent a year arguing with my parents, who felt I wasn't trying hard enough, and arguing with everyone else, which left me feeling miserable and useless. After a year, I managed to persuade the deputy headmaster that I wanted to give it up. I missed writing and reading and wanted to take English Literature instead. Unfortunately, after a year, it was too late to change A-Levels, so I had to just drop Economics without replacing it. To say my parents were disappointed was an understatement.

There aren't many degree subjects you can study with A-Levels of Physics, Maths and Further Maths; so I applied to study Maths at degree level. Within a few weeks of starting the course, I was in a panic: I didn't like the course, but what the hell can you change to when you have Physics and Double Maths as your A-Level subjects? Apart from Physics, which I found worse than Maths, so that was out. Some people had other A-Levels, such as art or geography, which they had good grades in and thus could change to; but for me, it was either finish the Maths degree or drop out of university. Horror stories abounded (at the time) of people who dropped out of university: with no degree, they were condemned to poorly-paid jobs with no hope of career progression or personal advancement. In addition my parents were only prepared to fund one three-year degree as they weren't exactly rich, which was fair enough. After being reassured that Maths was a useful degree which led to a wide array of jobs, I decided to grit my teeth, swallow my pain and finish it.

Which I did, and despite flirting heavily with student journalism and volunteer radio, in 2003, I graduated with a good, solid BSc Mathematics degree. But then what? The careers advisors who told me that "Maths was a useful degree which led to a wide array of jobs" were sought as I asked them what I could do. "You could teach?" one suggested. Er, no, don't fancy it. "You could become a statistician?" Sorry, I didn't like the statistics module. "You could go into finance?" I don't have any interest there, I'm afraid. "Ah, well, then you're stuffed. There's nothing else you can do, sorry." Another asked me, "what do you want to do, then?" Actually, I replied, I want to write for a living. "Ah, well, you've done the wrong degree. Nobody's going to want to take you on to write with a Maths degree. Sorry."

I decided to take a year out to travel, but having no money (and not having parents who were able to fund me) I decided the best way to pay for my travels would be to work as an English teacher, so after getting a TEFL (teaching English as a Foreign Language) qualification, I decided to spend most of 2004 in China, teaching English to adults and children and earning enough money to fund my travels. I loved it, and loved living in China, but didn't fancy the idea of teaching in the UK. So when my contract finished I returned to the UK but still had no idea what to do. My parents, though disappointed that I hadn't done an Economics degree, hadn't quite given up on the idea of me working in finance. Not wanting to disappoint them further, I applied to train as a chartered accountant, and with my Maths degree and grades, I had no problem being accepted for a training contract.

I make it sound a little bit as if my parents are to blame, but sitting here writing this, I don't think they entirely were. They had had to struggle all their lives; they hadn't been to university themselves and spent most of their adult lives working very hard for very little money, and clearly wanted the best for me. They simply didn't want me to struggle as they had done, and didn't want me to spend all my adult life worrying about money or living on a tight budget, as they had done. I can't blame them for that; and the fear of their children experiencing the same poverty and hopelessness they had once experienced must have been ever-present in their minds when urging me to do A-Levels and a degree which I may have hated, but would have - in their minds - secured my financial future for ever. I can't fault their intentions, but the guilt I felt at "failing" them or "letting them down" was the reason I chose the path I did, even if I didn't enjoy it or wasn't naturally good at it.

I wanted to quit accountancy so many times though; this was even worse than the Maths degree. I hated every minute of it and frequently cried myself to sleep. I hated the work, which was boring and repetitive, and hated most of my colleagues who were equally boring and repetitive - not to mention arrogant, spoiled, pretentious, chauvinistic and narrow-minded. Yuck. My mum hated seeing me unhappy; but at the same time didn't want me to give up. She didn't want me to miss out on the large salaries that many qualified accountants were supposedly receiving, and urged me not to quit the chartered accountancy training contract; these were just teething problems from a graduate unused to working life, she promised - you'll feel differently when you qualify in three years. I think she desperately wanted to believe that, but three years later I didn't feel any different; in fact I knew, more certainly at that point than any other, that I had been following the wrong path in my life for the last ten years.

And that, readers, is what kicked off the reassessment which led me to decide to change career. I'll pen off here, I think - you must be exhausted after reading this! I shall have to make future blogs shorter I reckon.