Hello All,

I feel as though it has been far too long since I have updated you on my life. As I mentioned in my previous blog entry dated 04-14-2012, though, there is just not enough time in the day to get everything done. I don't understand how that works, honestly. But such is life. Day in, and day out, our schedules seem to get busier and busier, do they not?

It's about nine o'clock this evening, and I am normally in bed by now. You see, dear friends, I am unable to sleep this evening. The reasons for that are plentiful, too. Mostly, though, they are related to my career. I shall explain those reasons in depth below.

Firstly - I do not know where my career needs to be right now, or if I am happy with where I am. Generally I am happy with my job, and I truly do enjoy it. However, in other ways, I feel as though my President has placed me in a position where I don't know that there will be very much room for advancement whatsoever. That really does frighten me very much. I moved up from being an Assistant Accountant about two years ago now. Generally that's how long my company would wait before promoting any employee.

Secondly - there has been so much turnover lately at my place of business. I cannot believe how many staff members we have lost in the past two months. I believe that there have been a total of three departures in that time period. Two Client Service Managers (CSM's), and one Senior Staff Accountant (SSA). For a larger corporation, that would make sense. And for any company, turnover does occur. It always has, and it always will, honestly. That's just the nature of business, I understand that. But in such a short period of time - that is what upsets me the most. The next position that I would be able to fit into is the Senior Staff Accountant position, that I referenced a few sentences ago. The problem is that, as I mentioned earlier, I feel like my President (also my supervisor/manager) has me where she wants me right now. I don't feel as though she will let me get off the team with the largest client for many reasons, really. I won't go into the details of that with all of you here - I will just say that I feel like the most relevant fact is that I will ruin the client relationship if I were to change teams within this organization.

Thirdly - I am very much concerned about the future of my organization. With so many CSM's and SSA's leaving, it has me questioning the stability of the organization, too. Such questions as the following have entered my mind in the past several days: Is this organization truly ready for the changes ahead? Is this company stable enough to sustain any financial hardships that might come along? If we're losing this many clients and staff members - what does that say about us? Why are we losing so many clients and staff members? My fear is that many of the clients that we are losing are going to our competition - which would be awful for my own organization. And on top of that - will this company be around years from now? If yes - do I truly want to stay here? Is it worth it to me?

As you can see from the information above, I have been considering a lot lately. The final thing that I will mention is the fact that I am working on a salary, and I have been working many more hours than the standard 40. I can work anywhere from 50 - 80 hours in any given week. I have already had to give up on going back to the University of Minnesota last fall as I was working far too many hours. I was doing very poorly in the online courses that I had taken, and so I made the decision to drop out of school, which had cost me over $3,000.00 of my savings account - I really wasn't left with very much after that. This company has taken so much from me - not only in terms of my financial health, but also my personal health as well. I was getting so nervous about work and school at the same time for a while there that I had to go to the doctor and determined that it was just stress from everything that was going on in my life. It was very challenging to leave my Bachelor's degree behind. But at the same time, I knew that going to school wasn't going to be what was going to pay the bills, either. So I had a very important decision to make. And I chose to drop out of school.

My partner and I are still together, after one year now. He moved into my home in April of 2011, and he is still here. Poor guy is already in bed as he gets up at 4:00 AM (as I do, too) to get ready for work. Things have been kind of rough for us lately. Sometimes I do question whether or not we are the right couple. There are some days when I am 100% certain that we were meant for each other, and then there are days when I am 100% certain that we should just go our separate ways. All in all, though, I believe that we are happy. We understand that we both have things to improve upon in our lives - but then again, who doesn't? As I approach the age of twenty-four years old, I am starting to realize that I do need to grow up some, too. Some of my past responses and questions here even on this forum have been somewhat "immature" in nature. Not in the sense that they were inappropriate or anything such as that. But just in the sense that the thoughts were perhaps more juvenile than one would expect from an adult. I do see myself growing up each day, and I do see the changes that lie within myself. I just pray that he does too.

I will end this blog entry here. I hope that all of you are having a wonderful morning/afternoon/evening depending upon the time that you read this entry. May you have a wonderful day each and every day that you are here on this earth - remember never to take anything for granted. We do not live forever. We do not know when we will be asked to come home.

Kind Regards
Dustin
DR-B