CBIZ: Month One.

Let's be real for three moments, cool?

I didn't start my accounting career the last two years since graduating from BYUH because I was scared that I would never have time to be happy. I wanted to just be with my husband and have babies and feel the sun on my skin while still paying for medical school and the necessities of life for however many of us there would be. While I do believe this is possible for some people to accomplish, I wasn't making the necessary steps to accomplish this because I wasn't motivated.

I saw so many others in the little blurbs of their lives that FB or Instagram allows and couldn't understand how they were leading lives without strife and worry while I was not consolable in my isolated case of vulnerability. I felt that my life had been ruined along the pathway of life that I had chosen; I made a wrong turn away from that smooth road to richness of life and ended up in a tangle of weeds I could have plucked much earlier.

After about a year and a half of skirting around the issue with Glen, it happened. The talk, which was more like a sob fest, was long and hard to confess. I didn't want to disappoint him or anyone, but mostly him. I felt like I was in a bind of expectations to become a career-driven, CPA-getting, mothering woman. I used words in between tissues and sharp breaths and got out my feelings that had been building for years (because it started much sooner than graduation). I was accusatory and defensive; he was forgiving, gentle, kind, understanding and everything I hadn't anticipated in all of my lonely squandering. He told me things like I hadn't thought of before like, "you can quit in a week if you don't like it." He gave me confidence and control over my life again. For the first time in a fairly long time I felt free.

And taking a look at the mess through new eyes, I realized what I really was doing for me was a lot of nothing. There was no progression and no ceiling that was disallowing my success. I had let my fears of unhappiness and inability engulf my desires for helping my family progress. I started interviewing and received an offer for a tax associate position for the CPA firm I had always wanted from my time at BYUH. Even with all of the pushing from professors and classmates alike to get into the big four firms, I knew it didn't jive with my work ethic; not that I couldn't handle the pressure, but that it might consume my life because I have problems saying no to superiors in some boss/employee situations. [I don't know that this would have truly happened, but I am not going to allow myself the opportunity for that to happen again.]

With the encouragement of Glen, I was able to overcome my psychological blockages and have been working in the Irvine office of CBIZ for a month, today.

I don't know how long I'll continue working during or after Glen has graduated from med school, but it doesn't really matter either. I'm grateful for my job even though traffic and studying for the CPA exam blows. I'm actually still happy and that's a huge deal.

Aloha.