Thoughts on My Personal Statement

Looking for some feedback on my personal statement. My main concerns are 1) I might be talking about resume stuff too much (its relevant to the main point of the statement, but still) and 2) sounding overly flowery/and or sincere, but I'll take whatever feedback I can get.
Much Appreciated!

Personal Statement:
As a kid, I read every work of genre fiction I could get my hands on. Everything from multi-part fantasy series and sci-fi adventures to murder mysteries and horror novels (some of which my parents probably shouldn’t have let me read, although I’m grateful that they did). I had my nose in a book whenever I had the chance: on the bus to school, in my bed late at night, even in the middle of class. I loved the comfort and escape these stories provided, but I’d always been particularly enamored with prose itself. It seemed like magic that reading the right words in the right order could make me think and feel so genuinely . That fascination made me want to be a writer more than anything . Unfortunately, an ill-planned attempt to author a fantasy novel as a seventh grader almost stopped me from pursuing that dream.

I had just finished reading a fantasy novel called Eragon by Christopher Paolini (the first in a series of books very near and dear to my heart). It was everything a thirteen-year-old could want out of a fantasy novel: swords and sorcery, an unlikely hero, and (most importantly to me at the time) dragons with cool names. I learned shortly after I finished reading that Paolini had written Eragon when he was only fourteen years old, just a year older than I was at the time. Compelled by a childish need to not be outdone, I suddenly felt a terrible pressure to begin writing my own book. I began trying to emulate Paolini to the best of my ability, but it turns out that constructing an entire fantasy world in your head and turning that into five-hundred-some-odd pages of coherent storytelling was a little beyond what I was capable of at fourteen. I’d jot down the occasional idea, but enormity of the task I had set for myself always scared me away from putting pen to paper in earnest. In hindsight, it’s clear that I simply bit off more than I could chew; after all, I hadn’t written more than your basic school essays at that point in my life and certainly nothing in the realm of fiction. However, I lacked the maturity to see it that way. After a few months of being too afraid of failing to even try, I had started convincing myself that I didn’t have what it took to be a writer.

Although I hadn’t given up completely by the beginning of high school, I began finding excuses for myself. At first, I’d tell myself I was too busy with schoolwork or working part-time jobs to write. Then as time went on, I found myself making justifications for letting go of my dream altogether: “It would be too hard to make a living as a writer,” or “I’ll never be as great as my favorite authors, so why bother.” By the time I graduated, my dream of being a writer seemed distant and impossible. I went to college devoid of passion, settling on a major in accounting just because it seemed practical. I had no idea that accounting would eventually lead me back to my childhood dream.

Somewhere along the line, I had enrolled in a five-year program that would also get me a master’s degree in taxation. Initially, this was just a way for me to delay the inevitable. I had as little interest in taxation as I did accounting, but I was in no rush to begin a career I had no passion for. As I entered my final semester of the program, I was assigned a research paper concerning a complex and ongoing tax issue. The idea was to produce a paper of publishable quality in an accounting trade publication, something like “The Journal of Accountancy.” Although I began the project feeling apathetic about the subject, I found myself immensely enjoying the writing process. The subject was filled with intricacies and nuances that demanded precise wording to explain, and the challenge of producing it was thrilling. It reminded me of the love of words and language I had when I was younger, this time without naïve expectations to hold me back. My childhood dream of being a writer had resurfaced, albeit with a bend towards nonfiction.

After I finished the paper, I knew that I wanted to write more. I decided that I was done making excuses to avoid pursuing my passions and that I would follow this new path as far as it would take me. I want to be a writer, but more than that, I don’t want to let go of my dream again.