Day 3 of testing positive. No severe symptoms, besides feeling tired and drowsy.
***
Ideas are the currency that I am most comfortable dealing with but my career didn’t start that way.
I trained to speak the language of money, finance and accounting. I enjoyed the challenge in the early days. I learnt to use the tools of the trade – spreadsheets and accounting software. I’d never taken an interest in computers during my childhood, so it meant I had a steep learning curve. Enjoyable, yet sometimes frustrating.
I soon discovered many other dimensions to the profession of accounting and taxation. Innovation in accounting appeared to be the dance of interpretation of legalese. The intertwining of the professions of accounting and law were mesmerizing. Enobled by statue, the ‘professionals’ had magic dust to make questionable transactions legal. Closer observation revealed tacit formal nods, made easy with the regular greasing of the palms of the executors of the law . These practices, I learnt, were how this business functioned. I began to dislike taxes and accounting and turned to commercial finance. It seemed less grey: helping ‘business’ make commercially sensible decisions.
It was another great learning challenge to see other than through the lens of taxes and accounting. How does a business extract value from a transaction? How do you negotiate terms and prices? What were the implications of the litany of terms that I despised in the legalese I had learnt? How do you build processes and enable systems to keep pace with businesses as they scale up? It was a period of absorption and learning, almost a different language.
*** to be continued.
Hemingway Readability Index: Grade 8