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Les Misérables-Inspired Video Reminds You That Busy Season Kills Your Dreams

As you may or may not know, today marks the day that the IRS will start accepting tax returns for individuals. With any luck, most of your December 31 year-end clients have closed their books for the year and are dropping a metric asston of documents on you. Generally speaking, it's about as good as any day to mark the beginning of busy season in earnest. There's really no easy way to say this so I'll just go with it — forget about looking forward to anything for the next two to three months, and for your determined capital market servants, for the rest of your days. 

I know that's depressing. "But I have career and financial security! I am making a lot of smart choices that will set the groundwork for a successful career!" Yeah, yeah. I know. Shut up. 

At some point in your lives, you may have thought that your career in accounting would be a little more glamorous, a little more exciting. At the very least you thought you'd meet some interesting people. 

But kinda like wiseguys — except for conducting meetings in strip clubs, beating up associates with whom you disagree to within an inch of their lives, driving an stupidly flashy car, undershirts being appropriate dress, et al. — you've chosen this life and you have no choice but to live it. 

And also like wiseguys, you act all tough when you are secretly talking about your biggest fears — "Busy season? Oh yeah, I can work February and March without a day off standing on my head." But when you are actually facing the reality of long hours day after day, week after week, you turn into a pathetic sobbing heap of patheticness. 

What I'm really trying to say here is that before the reality of being an accountant and working a busy season sunk in, you had dreams. You may have even held onto those dreams for a few years. You may still be clinging to them like imminent death. Dreams that didn't consist of dual-monitors, an increased risk of Type II diabetes, and working 12-hour Saturdays 10 weeks in a row. Everyone at one time had dreams of being something, but as Elaine once said, "It certainly wasn't this."

Anyway. Really the best thing you can do is make your peace with the fact that there accountants around you this very second and many accountants all across this great land that feel the same way.

One of these people is James Huang who has made a little bit of a name for himself by putting these types of feelings into video art (or something). His latest effort is below and hopefully you'll feel some kind of camaraderie with the rest of the public accounting community. Try to enjoy it. It's all you have.

And give up on your dreams already.