April 6, 2020
What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?
Once upon a time, I posed that question to Harmony, the main character in my mystery series. Well, Jake, the anti-hero, asked.
“You know, when I was a little kid, I wanted to be a cop when I grew up.” He glared at me. “Don’t laugh.”
I swallowed my chuckle with a sip of coffee. “What happened?”
He grimaced. “Life, I guess. I still think I would have been a good one.”
It was surreal, having a conversation with a renowned jewel thief about being a police officer. “Sometimes dreams just don’t work out,” I said, thinking about Janine and the library job.
“What dream hasn’t worked out for you?”
I picked up a section of the newspaper so he couldn’t see my eyes. “It’s not important. I’ve got a good life and good friends and that’s what matters.”
“Let me guess, you wanted to be an astronaut but your eyesight’s not good enough.”
“Worse. I wanted to be a cowboy. Not a cowgirl, mind you, but a cowboy.”
Jake snorted into his cup, spraying coffee everywhere. He snatched a handful of napkins from the holder and blotted the liquid from the newspaper. “Yeah, I can see where that might be a little hard to accomplish.” He eyed me. “You don’t have the right parts. But I must say, I like the parts you have.”
I crumpled up an insert from the paper and hurled it at him. I needed to find a way to keep him busy and out of my hair, and soon.
Now, I never wanted to be a cowboy. Daniel Boone, maybe. Or a hermit. There was a time I wanted to be a singer-songwriter, but only knew the basics about music. Or maybe a writer. Then I decided to be a librarian.
Those of you who have followed this blog for awhile may remember I actually got to be one. Part-time, in a small library in a small town. But it was everything I wanted. I got to be surrounded by books, I got to do story hour for kids, I got to help pick out new books to the collection. Best of all, I got to read when there was nothing else to do!
Life happened, and I had to leave that small town and small library. Eventually, I was introduced to computers and fell in love. (I won’t talk about the many jobs in between.) Yes, I’m old. No one had a personal computer when I was a kid.. And now I’m a Windows server administrator. A job that didn’t exist when I was growing up. (And one that certainly wouldn’t have been suggested to a teenage girl.)
The best part is, I’m a writer too! Which may seem like an odd combination. One is mathematical and the other creative. In the whole right side of the vs the left side of the brain theory, I’m using both equally, but not at the same time. And loving it.
I tell people I didn’t decide what I wanted to be when I grew up until I was over 40, and it’s the truth. Better late than never!
To find out what the other folks on this hop wanted to be when they grew up, follow the links below.
Be safe, everyone!
April 6, 2020
What did you want to be when you grew up vs. what you are today?
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I’m glad you found a job you love, P.J. Back in 1980 -1982 I used to work in a library too, but I wasn’t a librarian. It was my job to order all the music cassettes and LPs. I had to leave due to pregnancy but it was a great job.
Casettes and LPs! I still have a good-sized personal collection of those. (And the equipment to play them if I want to.)
I love your character’s take on the question. And the literary thread running through your life seems so apt, it’s as if it was inevitable that writing was always going to happen.
Writing happened off and on through my life. I wrote poetry (some of it pretty decent!) for many years before I switched to fiction.
There’s a man at our church who is a geophysicist, so pure science. He writes science fiction novels and romantic poetry and paints landscapes in his spare time. So I’m not surprised by the mixture. I suspect the reason some people are more one side of the brain or the other is that they are told they have to choose. This is coming from math-challenged me who once wanted to be an architect.
Or their brains are trained that way when they are kids, when parents and teachers pick out something they are good at and push it over everything else.
True. Our daughter was alwasy very artistic and still is – professional musician and poet who dabbles in drawing.
Our son was really good at math when he was little and he’s still really good at math. Everyone always pushed him toward math. He always says he sucks at writing. I had to home school him for an English course because he flunked it in school, so had to make it up in correspondence. I found a really good writer who believed he wasn’t good at writing and I think by the end of the course, I convinced him he’d been duped by whoever guided him into school. He’s now writing song lyrics — which are essentially poetry.
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I am sure many jobs done in our modern world didn’t exist when we were kids. I also got my first computer at the age of 24. My older son got his first computer at age 4 and not younger because I thought introducing him to a computer to young was a mother cop out for me. Instead, I spent time playing in our giant sandpit with him and creating water ponds using garden rocks and flowers. He is now a computer nerd and wants to be a programmer. My younger son was introduced to computer earlier because his brother had one.
I didn’t touch my first computer until I was over 30. Now I am a server administrator!
Literature as one of life’s mainstays. Awesome!