When I Grow Up

I was thinking the other day about all the professions I flirted with at one time or another. I've ended up in a great place, to be sure, but I really had some detours along the way.

When I was three, I was in the little program at church; a church so small "choir" wasn't even the word for it. Somehow in the middle of the song, I had toddled up to the microphone and grabbed the stand. There's a great picture of me hamming it up. So my first ambition was to be a singer.

I remember wanting to act fairly early as well. I used to delay bedtime by kissing Mom and Dad goodnight, lingering on them and smooshing my lips into their cheeks, calling it a "Hollywood kiss." We still call it that in my family. I always worked to get the lead in the school productions, but that rarely happened. I remember in fourth grade, each of the two classes did a performance of Peter and the Wolf. I made a much better and more convincing cat than Courtney did. See, competitive even at nine! And I can still, twenty-some-odd years later, recite the opening of the poem about Paul Revere's ride, especially since the Bigun was born on that day.

I toyed with being a teacher, for all of a day or so. In my college, if you went into the Education Building, you had better be looking for a bathroom. NOBODY with any real brains went through that program. I'm not saying education is a last-ditch program to keep stupid people in college; it's just at my college, it was. So instead I thought about writing. I'd been writing little stories and poems since elementary school, and making up little plays and things with the neighbor kids as long as I could remember. Unfortunately, there are a lot of writers out there writing a lot of things, and as I came up with ideas, they fled just as quickly. No, the Great American Novel would have to be crafted by someone else. I can't even get serious about NaNoWriMo.

After I did get an accounting degree (What? You're shocked at that?) I worked at that for a while. I was never any good at it, but I was learning a lot more on the job than I ever learned in college. My Tax Accounting professor took me aside one day and tried to convince me I had mad skillz in the field, and should apply to work for the IRS. Um, after Daddy's Big Audit I'd witnessed growing up, no thanks. Although looking back, I probably should have done it. I have more compassion than your average IRS agent. You would want me to audit your books. I am a softie.

I thought about going back to school to be a lawyer. I could be a tax accountant and make a bajillion dollars a year. Except I'm still no good at accountancy, and though I loved my law classes and made As in them, I just don't think I'd make any kind of lawyer. I may sit for the LSAT one day, just to see if I could. I'm weird like that.

I also frequently toy with ideas for businesses. I worked on ideas for

a contractor referral business for small jobs,
a personal assistant/concierge business,
writing a book on teaching kids from the Bible,
a party puppet palace,
a resale shop,
an online craft mall,

and my current "business" of party puppetry that goes to the party.

No wonder I'm so unfocused. There's still so much to do before I grow up.