When I was young my aspirations revolved around such lofty matters as cultural criticism—theater, cinema, avant-garde literature, Derrida… Yet, I ended up spending most of my adult life—the 35 years preceding the events at the center of my true-crime memoir I Built This Prison (December 2023)—in academic and professional pursuits of economics, finance, and accounting.
Dutifully, I obtained multiple advanced degrees in these disciplines—including a PhD and an MBA—on both sides of the Atlantic. More by force of circumstance than by deliberate choice, American entrepreneurial commerce has become my professional specialty, enabling my continuous career advancement as a financial executive.
When asked about it, I frequently referred to it as “firefighting”. It is my firm believe that putting out burning fires, which inevitably flare up in the daily struggle for commercial survival, is the core functional pre-requisite for financial execs in small and mid-size companies.
I even summarized my accumulated expertise into a system of fiscal-management principles in my CFO Techniques: A Hands-on Guide to Keeping Your Enterprise Solvent and Successful (Apress, 2011, as Marina Guzik) …
As it happens with some self-conscious white-collar breadwinners, none of that striving and overreaching effected fulfillment, esteem, or contentment. In fact, it turned me into one very Frustrated CFO… And no cultural pursuits or intellectual experiences could mitigate the void…
Hence, this blog, which I started back in 2010 in my idealistic believe that’s writing is therapy… And it helped—it helped a lot… But I guess, not enough…
Eventually, under the pressure of it all, my psyche deteriorated and the evil came out…
Curious? My memoir recounts the ensued metamorphosis—the downfall and the reformation. Writing it was an integral part of my continuous atonement…
And this blog… I had no access to it for several years… And afterwards… It’s hard to find time when there is not enough motivation… Yet, the stubbornly opinionated mule within me refuses to abandon it… A lot of pretty good thinking transpired within its paragraphs. And from time to time, I still get an urge to say something…
The Frustrated CFO 