What Do You Want To Do?

When I was little, figuring out what I wanted to do was so easy. At first, I wanted to be a dentist, until my dad mentioned that I'd have my hands in people's mouths all day (My reaction?Eeeewwww! I was about 5 at the time.) Then I wanted to be a country music singer, and belted out some pretty good tunes in the living room, at the dining room table, in the bathtub, in the backyard..... But when I first figured out that I could get a pencil and fill up a notebook with stories--real stories like they had in books--that is all I really wanted to do. 

Then came the roadblocks. I was painfully shy (and often still am) and just getting up the nerve to let anyone even read my stories was tough. But our school did have a newspaper for a semester or two (we were tiiiny), and I can't even remember what I wrote, but I do remember the thrill of seeing my name in print, officially. In college, I was sure that I wanted to write novels and poetry and draw too, but before he died, my dad really drummed into me that I needed to really do something practical. I remember sitting in the hospital room with him before his final round of chemo, and us talking about my future. I wanted to write; and he was supportive of my choice (being so shy, I seldom offered any) but gently told me to think about money too.

For a while, it was easy not to think about the money and just get lost in the dreams. I was a journalism major as a backup, but I knew that after college I was going to go to New York and be a writer. So naive! Until my sister started asking where I would live and how I would support myself and how I'd even eat, moving to New York with no job and just a few hundred dollars in the bank.

So I came home. I feel like my career so far really has been serendipitious...I got my start working in magazines, then got an interest in PR and now marketing. But I started thinking too much about the money and not enough about what I really love. So now I'm full circle again, dreaming dreams that I haven't thought about in a while.

Will I make the right choice? I don't know...heaven knows I've made plenty of bad ones already. But one thing I've always said and always believed in is that certain things aren't worth it unless they make you happy. Even if they ensure you're in a certain tax bracket and can take vacations to places you've always wanted to go. Day-to-day happiness, that's what I'm wishing for. We'll see what happens next.