Please ensure Javascript is enabled for purposes of website accessibility

4 year long Miserable Accounting Career (non CPA firm)

My accounting career has been a total disaster and I don’t know what to do. I have been in my accounting career for 4 years and I feel like I have not learned much of anything and I have been miserable the whole time.I graduated Cum laude with a 3.8 . I thought I was smart, I thought my career would thrive. I did not go the public path because I heard too many horror stories. I thought I was going to get my CPA but it never happened. Life got in the way. 

 

Here is a brief run down of my pathetic career. First was my internship at a county auditor-controller office. I had maybe an hour and a half worth of work in an 8 hour day. This went on for 7 months. Miserable. I expected this as it was an unpaid internship. Then there was AP/AR. I had about 4 hours worth of work in an 8 hour day on average. I found that extremely boring/unfulfilling and I never warmed up to the people there. This was for a year and 7 months. Miserable. My next position was a Staff Accountant for an outsourcing accounting start up. not boring. I thought I was going to learn a lot there and finally meet my potential but it ended up being total chaos , extremely long/ weird hours (midnight, 4 in the morning), no one knew what they were doing, and poor poor management. The stress was making me physically ill. I was there for 2 years.
 
Instead of taking some time off to figure out if I want to continue in this career path or pursue something else, I took the first offer I got for a new position out of desperation that I wont get another. It has been a little over 2 months and I am so miserable. I am actually writing this at my desk because I literally have nothing else to do. I have no work and I have asked repeatedly and gave suggestions on projects I can work on with no luck. I have a lot of down time and I spend it thinking about how miserable I am and have always been in my career. I HATE the 9-5+ . I HATE that I feel like I have to be at my desk all day and on the slow days (most days) , I have to “pretend” to work.
 
What the hell should I do? and what the hell is going on. I have not liked 1 job. The funny thing is that I actually like the work. It is everything else about the companies I have worked for that I can not stand. I feel like I have NEVER been used to my full potential and never had a true opportunity to learn and grow within this career.  I cant take another year of misery. I want to quit this one so bad. I want to give up on the entire profession. However, I would not have the slightest clue of what I should do. Are there accounting jobs that are exciting but also have a work /life balance? Flexible hours/ work from home? I love reconciliations and investigating the numbers. I am just lost. Any advice? Who has been here before?