The Firm

I am a person who likes money. Let me explain.

Not that I do not like to have the money itself, that we have in our wallet and the current account, and we gain expending a lot of sweat. I like this kind of money too, and too much.

But when I say that like money, is the sense of liking to study how the wealth is often created, stored, accumulated, transferred, lost and destroyed. I like money from an economic standpoint. After all, while I am not exactly an economist, I have a degree in Business Administration, and the two areas are closely linked. In fact, I might as well have done economics, but fate did not allow things went in their normality. I wanted to be an economist, but I changed my mind and went to study management.

But economics is a science more theoretical than practical, and manage companies is one way of doing economic theory turn in action.

Once I understood that money has relation with economics and business, it was as if I had discovered the wheel. Interestingly, there was not one thing quickly or early. I was living a life of a young adult, working and supporting me, but without a track in hands to touch the rest of my life.

So, since I chose to be a business administrator, they, the companies, have fascinated me.

But one thing is to study companies. Administer them in fact is another task, far more complex.

I ventured to open "The Firm". Like many millions of people make around the world all the time, I risked to join my knowledge and luck and tried to make money, lots of money. Nothing more welcome in our capitalist and competitive world.

But it did not work. Lacked luck, lacked knowledge, lacked maturity and remaining problems of all kinds.

The result was not a failure, but an abortion.

You see, abortion is a kind of failure, but in this case, we can not even speak of a "firm" in its real sense. There was never any firm. Simply there was a name and a public record, a formality. It is as if a child had his birth certificate recorded before birth, but still in the womb. Simply nothing happened in the real world. Only in the legal world, the papers and documents.

Look: abortion is a kind of failure, but in this case, we can not even speak of a "firm" in its real sense. There was not any firm, never. Simply there was a name and a public record, a formality. It is as if a child had his birth certificate recorded before birth, but still in the womb. Simply nothing happened in the real world. Only in the legal world, the papers and documents.

I changed my mind, I changed my plans, I left the firm of paper and walked with my life in other ways. But the firm of paper was still there, registered as a skeleton, an X-ray of a skeleton, a mere image of what could have been a firm. As a radiograph does not grow, does not evolve or enrich anyone, she did not die. The firm continued for years in its "inactive" formal status. All radiographic years of hibernation were marked by negative statements of income tax of legal entities, a kind of macabre ritual in which we testify that something is dead, but we can not yet rid of its skeleton.

Then one day I decided to remind me that I needed a kind of exorcism. For an administrator, or at least to me, a manager, a failed firm was like a certificate of incompetence.

Of course, now I think differently about companies that do not work, but for many years I tried to forget this company and all the pain that involved, abandoned dreams and chronic problems unresolved. I have created it on paper and never have been able to go ahead and have tried to do some of my dreams come true for me was cause for great sadness and frustration. And I'm not accustomed to give up, fail and lower my head, overcome or defeated.

Maybe that's why I only remembered it when I got the month of income tax declarations. At this time, a friend, an accountant, called me and said  that I needed to do the damn negative statement.

One day, I noted in my file of Microsoft Outlook, in a task folder, a reminder: close firm.

This was my most important task, but remained purposely ignored for over many years to come, because, I admit, it was painful to put a definitive end to it, closing it definitely in the record companies.

While hibernating, there was always the possibility of turning it back on and restart some grand project through it and their roles.

Then life took a new turn and changed my plans. No business, no business, ever.

So even the roles hibernating were a problem because with the new course, I could not legally have no company, and in this case even a single record was a potential problem.

So, I took courage and decided to face the huge bureaucracy that was to close a company in Brazil.

In fact, some years before I even tried to tackle the problem, but gave up. It was too much paperwork, too much money, too much work. I gave up.

This time, I would go ahead.

So I was surprised, because the laws had changed, and the thing was simple, quick, cheap and painless.

Today, I am an administrator who had a firm, which never came into work, and which is formally closed, in perfect accordance with the law.

I feel less frustrated now than I did a few years ago. This firm existed for twelve, thirteen years.

At this time, the pain left behind and what was a trauma seems to have disappeared with time, as any trauma.

Do not know if I dare engage in business today, but I also not see why I could not get involved. After all, I'm still a businessman, working intellectually in this field, though not directly.

If one day I venture to meddle with business, did I open a new firm?

I do not know, but this, for all practical purposes, will not exist again.

The "Firm" is definitely closed.