Newfound Respect

I have newfound respect. For accountants. And auditors. And everyone else whose job is to look through thousands of financial documents and numbers day in day out.

I’ve never been particularly good at details and numbers, especially if they don’t contain concepts behind them. Just like excel files for money records. To add on, they all have to be organised in a particular way, with many many rules. This must go here, this must go there. What if I do it another way? It won’t work, it has to be this way. Oh God, that sounds like hell to me. How repetitive, how boring, how mundane that sounds!

What if I colour the excel files and use a type that pleases my eyes more, or arrange it in this or that way so it looks friendlier and not so much rigid and masochist? Can I make a graph out of it? Maybe I’m nuts. I’m the person who spends more time making sure the powerpoint slides look pretty than writing the contents anyway.

I’ve always been attracted to things concrete, something I can see, I can touch, feel, or at least imagine. I think I’m a little more visual than other people. Maybe that’s why I take so long to read novels. Whenever I start reading one, I have a movie going in my head.

Numbers are just that to me. Numbers. 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9. Nothing else. In physics (which, I must admit, I’m not bad in) the number represent concepts. When a question mentions a 50kg weight and a 5kg weight, I have this visualisation of a balance in my mind, with the two weights on it, obeying the laws of gravity. When I lift up my hypothetical weights, I can compare them and then know which one is heavier.  When a problem mentions $1,378.22 I don’t have anything visualised in my mind. Maybe the number 137822 but that’s about it. It doesn’t make me feel any emotion either, like when I’m reading or writing.Neither do I have any affection for money. So, blah.

So if you’re an accountant, or an auditor, or a bookkeeper, I salute you.