Adult Content

Maybe you know, maybe you don't, but I just started a new job. My first grown-up job, actually, working at a marketing firm. It's only my second week and already I wonder if waking up early and sitting in an office all day suits me. I can't blog for a living, though (yet!), so up I get and in I go, every day.

When I was little, I never dreamed of working in marketing for a living. No, I didn't imagine I'd be writing press releases and SEO tags all day, but I wasn't one of those kids who wanted to grow up to be the president or an astronaut or a cartoon character or something ridiculous, either. I had a few other ideas in mind:

• Pro Figure Skater

Truthfully, I wanted to be Nancy Kerrigan (minus that nasty knee injury). But since the position was already filled, I would have settled for becoming an Olympic champ in my own right. Problem is, I had never ice skated before. Other problem is, Olympic-caliber athletes have generally been training since birth. Other other problem is, they get up really early in the morning, and I like to sleep in. It just wasn’t in the cards. Which is probably for the best, because while I’m pretty stellar at Rollerblading (and look pretty awesome doing it, of course), I still fall down an awful lot on ice. My cutting edge dreams just weren’t meant to be except briefly, at a Career Fair theme party in college.

• Professional Singer

This followed along the lines of my figure skating aspirations, in that I wanted to do something for a living that I can’t even do for free. Anyone who has accompanied me to karaoke knows that while I’m not the worst singer in the bar, I’m not likely to get a standing ovation. Only the occasional notes are hit. I love karaoke, and I think I make up for my lack of killer pipes with my enthusiasm, but there’s no record deal in my future. I’m not getting discovered singing Tom Petty at the Clermont Lounge. As a kid, though, I don’t think I fully realized that I’m not a singer. I was in chorus. I tried out for solos in the school musicals and never understood why I always got the speaking parts instead (the biggest speaking parts—oh yeah, I was quite the thespian in the 5th grade). Now I know why.

• Reporter

At some point or another, I began to want to be a journalist. I don’t remember when the dream developed from generic reporter to magazine journalist, but the general idea stuck with me at least through most of college, ever since which my degree in Magazine Journalism has primarily been used as a placemat. I doubt I’d be the blogger I am today, though, if it weren’t for those long-form feature writing classes. Regardless, the journalism I participate in these days is primarily of the citizen variety.

• Lawyer

Reading too many John Grisham novels and watching way too much Ally McBeal in the 8th grade contributed to this pipe dream. I was even pre-law when I started college, and you know, it wasn't so out of the realm of possibility that I would have gone to law school. I just didn't really feel like it. When you're pre-law your freshman year, they devote an inordinate amount of time to talking you out of it. "It's nothing like it looks on TV!" they say over and over. "You're hardly ever in the courtroom! It's all research!" You mean it's not going to be like Legally Blonde all the time? Well then never mind. I'm out.

So I'm none of those things right now. Not by a long shot. And I'm not sure I know what I really want to be when I grow up-- maybe the president. Maybe an astronaut. Maybe a cartoon character. Or maybe I won't give up on my dreams after all. Maybe I'm destined to earn a gold medal or a gold record. For now, I'm just going to keep paying the bills, and maybe one day my childhood dreams will be realized.