An Accountant is Born

Captain Fiscal Furr at work

I enjoyed building and launching my business because it reminded me all the time how grateful and lucky I am to have found my calling in this world. It seems like an accident at times that I became an accountant in the first place, but I certainly didn’t become a nonprofit accountant by accident. But let me start from the beginning.

In my teens and twenties, my goal was to be a great drummer. I started late in music, and I had so many missing years to make up for, compared to the musicians I was comparing myself to. I applied myself, practiced constantly and got good enough to make a very basic living off from it for a while. Then, one day I lost feeling from my elbow down in my right arm. It turned out to be radial/carpal tunnel, and it ended any chance of making music into a career.

I grieved, and I was lost for a long time: I took whatever jobs came along, moved to Portland, Maine. For years I didn’t think too much about careers, when I ended up temping as an accounting clerk for the State of Maine. I was shocked at how much I enjoyed this work. It felt calming to take the chaos of a bunch of invoices, organize, record and store them, blah blah blah. Won’t go into any more specifics because you, dear reader, will fall asleep.

At the same time, all my friends were working in the nonprofit world: and I was called to it as well. Lucky me! We can all complain about the inability of the industry to pay a fair and livable wage, at least this sector is trying to find solutions to our society’s epic problems, or at least treat the symptoms. The more I read about organizations that exist for pure profit, the more I feel like hurling: but who could possibly spend a lifetime without being seduced by any one of the glorious causes that are out there? The environment? Justice? Equity? Defending and uplifting marginalized populations? Yes, please, I will have some more of that.

So one day, the two clicked together in my head, I woke up and I said “I have to go back to school, study accounting and become an expert in the non-profit sector.” Suddenly, one day in 2008 I found myself in grad school, studying accounting. The rest, as they say, is history.