the announcement you have - or haven't - been waiting for...

on december 16th, after 40 years of business, i closed our family accounting firm. i know... big whoop... it is actually quite a big deal around these parts and is the main reason that i have been such a slacker of a blogger. let's just say that you collect a lot of crap over 40 years time. and when the business is run out of your home your "work stuff" and your "you stuff" start shacking up. which is perfectly fine if you aren't trying to sell all of your work stuff without a rouge pair or underwear getting caught up in the madness. so i am now having a bit of an identity crisis because, if you can do math - which i can't without an adding machine (which i sold with the business) - you will notice that the business was a bit older than i am which means that i have lived with it for all of my 36 years. which makes me kind of feel like i just sold off one of my siblings. granted, it was a sibling that was a lot of work and i didn't like very much, but it was part of the family none the less. more than that, it became a part of who i was and how i showed love to my family. you see, accounting is not even on the short list of what i would choose for a career. i sort of fell into it and for a while it was where i was supposed to be. and most importantly to me at the time - it was how i showed love to my mother. for so many of us women, approval of our mothers drives more than one decision in our life. for me, running a business in an industry that i was not in love with, was my attempt at gaining or earning that love. as i look back on the ten years that i spent at the helm of willett bookkeeping, it became much more than a business. it became a tool that tested the strength of our family. it became a form of therapy for the relationship between my mother and myself. and sadly it broke some family bonds that i held dear. i am a firm believer that life is about the journey. i don't regret the choice i made to run the business or to stay in the business for as long as i did. you see, had i not made the choices i did i would have never understood the strength that it took for my mother to run a business from home while working full time and raising four kids on her own. i would have never learned how much my sisters love me and truly want what is best for me. i would have never learned the amount of strength that i can muster when i need it. but most importantly, i would have never known that my mother is actually proud of me - not because of what i do, but because of who i am. and that makes it all worth it.
be brave, friends...
<3 anna