Accounting for My Time

Okay, I admit it.  It was a mistake.  I shouldn't have slacked off from early February through mid-April.  During that time I was incredibly busy, going through the graduation ceremony, participating in Holy Week liturgies and activities, learning to use my new camera, writing two serials and editing Heirs of Mâvarin, setting up my new laptop, dealing with the aftermath of my car accident, interviewing with a recruiter and an accounting firm, shopping with (and without) my husband, sorting papers, doing the taxes, working full time and blogging, blogging, blogging.  But in all that time, I did virtually no studying for the CPA exam, and let my accounting education get stale in my head.  Shame on me.

I had hoped to get a lot done during that down time.  I wanted to take three weeks or so and do some serious editing on both novels, so that the first could be submitted somewhere and the second could be at least almost ready to go out.  I wanted to diet and clean and also relax a little, catch up on my sleep and even read a few books.  That mostly didn't happen, either.

Where did the time go?  I haven't used BlogExplosion or BlogClicker in many weeks, and read very few journal entries except via AOL Alerts and my LiveJournal Friends page.  I've made progress on the cleaning, but not that much progress.  I've entered perhaps a chapter's worth of edits to the novel documents, and made changes by hand to about four chapters of my  Heirs printout.  Yes, okay, I've spent a fair amount of time at church, and taking pictures, and probably too much time blogging.  But is this all I have time for?  A day at the office, one blog entry a night, take a bath and suddenly it's 3 AM?

I have to do better than this.  I haven't spend the $800+ on CPA exam review software, but I've started going through the review books I bought, making the trek to Barnes & Noble nearly every night because I know darn well I won't get any studying done in this house.  Tonight I read in one of the books that I should put in 20 hours a week studying for 20 weeks if I want to pass the whole exam.  That's not taking into account that I won't take all four parts of the exam in  July (I've already blown May as a reasonable test date), but clearly, time's a wastin'. 

It's discouraging how very not-ready I am, how much I've forgotten since my last accounting course ended in September. I abandoned a diagnostic pre-test tonight after an hour or so because I felt so rusty on nearly every question that taking it at all seemed pointless.  So instead I started reading the conceptual framework chapter of the FAR review book.  At least that stuff seemed fairly familiar--economic entity assumption, historical cost principle, assets equals liabilities plus owner's equity.  But it's a long way from that ACC 362 stuff to something like this:

Park Co. uses the equity method to account for its January 1, 20X2, purchase of Tun, Inc.'s common stock.  On January 1, 20X2, the fair values of Tun's FIFO inventory and land exceeded their carrying amounts.  How do these excesses of fair values over carrying amounts affect Park's reported equity in Tun's 20X2 earnings?
--Bisk, CPA Ready Comprehensive CPA Exam Review: Financial Accounting & Reporting, 34th Edition, 2005-2006)

Tomorrow I have an interview with a different recruiter from the one that's been mostly ignoring me (or maybe I haven't been attentive enough to her).  I've been a little discouraged this week, because I forgot to send a thank you for last week's interview and I haven't heard back from the firm.  Also, John announced on Monday that two other temp editors brought in after he was had been let go, which made his own temp-to-hire position seem more precarious.  But John is still expected to be hired at the end of his contract, and this other recruiter sounds so positive and enthusiastic on the phone that I will probably feel much better by the time I leave her office tomorrow.

Meanwhile I went to Dillard's and bought a couple of tops that should be professional enough to wear to interviews, cool enough that I won't roast as I did last week wearing a navy jacket in 92 degree weather.  I should take a picture, huh?  Well, maybe in the morning.

But if my journal entries get less ambitious for a while in length and scope, I hope you'll understand.  I need to learn to be more concise, anyway.

Karen