Trying to Romanticize Accounting, Only to Find a Replay of My Life

I’ve made the decision to work toward my basic accounting and bookkeeping certification, and I don’t really know how else to say it except this: it’s kicking my butt.

My brain doesn’t naturally live in numbers. It lives in emotion and creativity. In stories, people, and meaning. I’m wired to feel my way through things—to build from vision and instinct. So sitting with spreadsheets and formulas feels foreign. Not wrong. Just unfamiliar.

Still, I know why I’m here.

When you’re building something—especially on your own—the numbers matter. They keep things honest. They keep things standing. They don’t tell the whole story, but they do hold it together. And if I’m going to ask people to trust what I’m creating, I need to be willing to learn the parts that don’t come naturally to me.

So today, I took my notes and my overthinking brain to my favorite local coffee shop, hoping a familiar space would soften the frustration a little. Coffee in hand. Laptop open. Music playing quietly while I tried (and failed, and tried again) to make things click. At some point, I changed the playlist—just to give myself a break—and looked up.

And the room met me there.

To my right, a couple sat across from each other on a slow Sunday coffee date. Easy. Unrushed. The kind of connection that doesn’t need to be loud to be real. It made me think about the seasons where I believed love had to feel intense to matter—and how much peace I’ve found learning otherwise.

In front of me, a young girl sat quietly with her coffee, carrying the weight of a heartbreak she didn’t ask for. I recognized that posture immediately. The version of me who thought heartbreak would undo her. Who couldn’t yet see that surviving it would eventually become part of her strength.

Next to me, two girls leaned over a laptop, working through a college project. Half focused, half overwhelmed. I thought about all the times I felt behind—learning skills without knowing why I’d need them, trusting the process without seeing the outcome. Those seasons felt heavy at the time. Looking back, they were quietly shaping me.

In the corner, three friends sat talking through ideas for a business that wasn’t fully formed yet. Brave in that way only beginnings are. Hopeful. Nervous. Starting anyway. I’ve been her too—unsure, scared, convinced one wrong move might ruin everything.

And sitting there, watching all of it unfold, I realized something that settled me.

Every version of me I’ve ever been thought that season was the hard one. The one that would break her. And yet—here I am.

Every storm. Every heartbreak. Every uncertain step forward—I’ve survived all of them. Not because I had it figured out. Not because I wasn’t afraid. But because I stayed. And because God carried me through even when I didn’t notice it happening.

Sitting there with my coffee and my accounting notes, God gently slowed me down.

Not to fix anything.
Just to remind me.

This season—this uncomfortable, analytical, brain-stretching little chapter—is not the storm. It’s just another moment of growth.

And honestly, it made me smile—because just last weekend I was sitting across from someone sweet, in one of those moments that would’ve normally made me deflect, giggle, or shrink a little. Instead, I stayed. I received the compliment. I let the moment be what it was. We looked at each other, smiled, and said one word: growth. And standing there now, in the middle of a coffee shop with accounting notes spread out in front of me, I felt that same thing settling in my chest. Different setting. Same feeling.

So I stayed.
I opened my laptop again.
I took a breath.

I don’t suddenly love accounting. I still have moments where I want to close my computer and do literally anything else. But I care about what I’m building enough to do the work that supports it—even when it feels clumsy and slow.

And maybe that’s the quiet encouragement here—for me, and for you if you’re reading this in the middle of something hard.

If it feels uncomfortable, it doesn’t mean you’re failing. Sometimes it just means you’re growing. Sometimes it means you’re being asked to slow down long enough to notice how far you’ve already come.

The next challenge will come. It always does.

But so will the strength to meet it.