About Dan O’Shea

I’ve been told to write this in the third-person as it’s for some reason viewed as amateurish to write a biography in the first-person. Well, I refuse. I am not someone who speaks of myself in the third-person, and I will not be someone who writes of myself that way either. My name is Daniel O’Shea and I am stubborn, prideful and an ‘amateurish’ writer.

I was born in Tennessee, but raised mostly in New Hampshire. I loved to read and draw as a child, but I never expected to become a writer. My life has always been directed down a more structured path of science, math, and most of all, business. I graduated with a M.S. in Finance at Northeastern University in Boston with the hopes that it would give me a leg up in my career. Though, many times it seems to simply have been a rather expensive waste of time.

Early on in my career I was encouraged by a friend, who motivated me only as a mentor could, to start my own accounting consulting business. I was young and anxious, but starting a business is much simpler than most people realize. Operating them successfully can be hard, and at many times it was. The consulting business is why I am where I am. It afforded me the opportunity to work my own hours while paying for college. It gave me the confidence and knowledge to pursue far reaching goals. It granted me the certainty in myself to take, and pass, the Mensa entrance exam. And more than anything else, it allowed me the free time to begin writing and exploring the more artistic side of my personality. 

I suppose getting a degree in finance was helpful, perhaps even crucial, to becoming a writer. Our roads may not always be straight or clear. We’ll almost certainly start our journeys far from where we end them. But it wouldn’t be meaningful if the goal was easily reached. The best adventures always start on a cloudy day.