The trouble with being an accountant.

I hate that everyone around me thinks they know what they want to do for the rest of their lives. I hate that i'm the only one who knows for sure that i dont know what i want to do or how i'm going to do it. The difference is, they've convinced themsleves that they've figured it out and are thus pursuing their respective illusions whereas i, in my profound knowledge of being ignorant, have put my life on hold until i figure things out and am thus confined to self stagnance.

Ofcourse they are much better off than i am for atleast they'll have their shattered illusons to fall back on when they realise it's too late to pursue what they actually wanted all along. Better to be an unhappy accountant than an ambitious bum which is where i am surely headed if i dont have a life altering epiphany one of these days. It's just that i'd hate to be an accountant. Even for the maffia, which is about as exciting as that job can get.

When i finished 'O' level, we had a long 9 month break from school during which i hoped desperately to get a job because i knew the idleness would kill me. My dad's "friend" offered me a job at his company. Really it was to grease relations with my father whose approval this smart businessman needed desperately for a government related contract. On the day i was meant to go in for an interview for the job, i got dressed real serious looking, the one time i can remember not feeling awkward tucking my shirt in. I wanted to impress the dude which would in turn make my dad happy which i felt he deserved for putting up with me. I get to the guy's office and he's this short South Korean gentleman, dressed in all black and looking like he was straight out of a James Bond movie. But he was really nice; we talked about ice cream ( he owned an ice cream producing company among other things) and eventually he asked me what i wanted to do. I'll tell you now i was thrown by this question. Completely blindsided. I really should have expected it and it had occurred to me that he would ask something to this effect but all the talk about ice cream and the different flavours just sent me off track. I couldn't respond.

It didnt sem to bother him; he musta needed that contract real bad. So he walks me around one of his plants asking me if i could see myself doing any of these jobs for him: everything from working in what was essentially a large freezer filled with several vats of milk to driving one of his delivery vans and every process in between. I liked the driving gig but i didnt have a license yet so i couldnt take him up on that. I found myself rejecting one position after another until at last, the guy seeming increasingly desperate, made a job up for me on the spot. He said he'd set up an office for me to count money all day. That's it. Just sit there, count and bundle money all day. I thought about it for a fraction of a second and politely turned him down saying i probably wasnt cut out for the ice cream industry, being lactose intolerant and all. He was disappointed but was decidedly more relieved that i wouldnt be working in his plant.

At the time, i had my eye on a job working in an internet cafe an auntie of mine was setting up at the time when there was only a handful of them in our city. My dad was obviously disappointed least because i didnt even get that internet cafe job and ended up sitting around the house all 9 month of that never-ending vacation but i figured there'd be plenty more oportunities to buy his love with equally self-serving gestures.

The point is, sometimes it's not about knowing what you want to do; it's about refusing to do what you know you dont want to. And that's why i pick bum over accountant in a heartbeat.