The Quarter Life Crisis Hotline

“Keep your nose in those books so you can go to college and get a better job than your old man.”

Study hard and go to college. Keep studying hard and get a nice job in an air-conditioned office. That was the advice my old man gave me before he passed. Before I graduated high school. So that’s what I did. I studied really hard in high school so I could get into any college I wanted to, because while I was studying, I had no idea what school I wanted to go to. I got into a good one. Then I studied really hard in college so I could get any job I wanted, because while I was studying, I had no idea what kind of job I wanted. Again, I got a good one.

Somehow I became an auditor. It was the best-paying gig I could get out of school with a business degree. And now I don’t know what to do. Dad’s gone. You inherit vinyl collections, not life-guiding advice. My employer is saying that I should study for my CPA so that I can keep the job I have and rise up the rungs of the Corporate Audit ladder.

Thing is… I don’t want to be an auditor. That was never the plan. I just wanted a good job. I hated my accounting classes in college. I loved the writing classes I took, though. That’s where I developed the characters and the backbone of the story for Ginger Smoke.

I never wanted to be an auditor, and here I am, auditing. I studied for the first part of my CPA exam. I studied a lot. You need a 75 to pass each of the 4 parts of the exam. I got a 74.

I’ve heard it before, about the concept of a midlife crisis. You wake up one day in your forties and don’t know where the last 10 years or so of your life went. Well I woke up everyday this past year and wondered where my life was going.

I’m 2 months shy of 24. I have come to consider the past several months my “Quarter Life Crisis.”

I have already invested hours and hours of time into studying, and I was about to devote exponentially more into passing an exam to pursue a career I wanted no part of.

I cut my losses.

It’s terrifying to forfeit stability. I could have passed the exam and set myself up with a steady paycheck for the rest of my life. But the more I thought about it, the more I found the latter more terrifying. It’s also very liberating to give up the same notion of stability. I won’t be eligible for promotion in a few years without my certification. My job now has an expiration date.

You know what? It is thoroughly satisfying. I feel refreshed. Now I’m going to focus on my writing, because I have no idea what I want to do with the rest of my life. I’m back to that old plan…

I’m going to keep my nose in this book.