The origins of From Red To Black was covered in a previous blog post. To keep it short and simple: I wanted to give back some of the goodwill that I received to others who were chasing new opportunities. But why was it that I chose a profession in this field specifically?
The answer is that I wanted a more practical career that suited my skill set.
I loved the thought of being a programmer and figured that would be a suitable career path for me. That was why I signed up to attend college as soon as I finished graduating High School, jumping straight into spending four years to receive a Bachelor’s Degree without any real thought about the consequences of making such a decision. At the time, I figured that if I graduated with a solid enough GPA then things would work out just fine.
Except it didn’t quite work out that way.
I received a rather harsh lesson on the nature of how pursuing careers work after graduation. I had the technical knowledge of how everything would work, but surprisingly few companies were willing to hire a fresh graduate without any practical experience. And one of the projects I spent a solid year working on had not only left me feeling burned out, but it ended up being canceled. So I had nothing to show for a year's worth of effort but fatigue and failure.
It wore me down, to be honest. I spent four solid years working to get a degree that gradually became worthless and only realized that I had set myself up for failure by not having a backup plan. The worst part is that I was not in a position to pursue a new career easily. It made me afraid that I would just make that same costly mistake again if I rushed into things, so I had to learn from the experience going forward.
That was why I was a lot more practical when I had a second chance to return to college. I didn’t want to fall into the same pitfalls as before. The impetus to dive specifically into bookkeeping and forming From Red To Black stemmed from that decision as well, since it allowed me to help others who decided to take a gamble with starting a new business.
And I am honestly more satisfied with my career choice now than ever.
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