It's a new year and I'm 26 and I'm realizing that I still don't know what I want to be when I grow up. Isn't it weird how when you're a kid all anyone ever asks you is what you want to be when you grow up?
     From the first thought that I remember, I wanted to be a vet. It was my biggest dream. I thought I'd live on a huge farm and all of the animals in the world who didn't have a home would come live with me. (My mother had this same dream about an orphanage for children when she was young).

Me, age 4 in preschool

I read everything I could about animals and vets and had exactly 8 billion stuffed animals. Then our cat died at the vet and I realized being a vet could be heartbreaking.
     After nixing vet from my future, I hung out in a limbo for a while where I truly believed if I wished it hard enough, I could become a Bengal Tiger. Don't laugh. We all have dreams.  And yes, that's a Bengal Tiger, not Siberian, not Indochinese, not Malayan, not South China. Bengal. Soon after this, I thought that I wished hard enough I would get my owl to enter the Wizarding World of Harry Potter. Bengal Tiger or a witch, I would have been happy with either.

                                                   

       When I was in sixth grade and it was clear my owl was not a year late, nor was I sprouting whiskers and stripes, I got on a crime novel kick and was convinced I wanted to be a lawyer. All the research and reading and debating and solving the puzzles, oh! I'd just be great at it. All murderers behind bars. I started researching law schools and settled on Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia--I'd go after playing women's basketball during undergrad, of course.

       Somewhere along the lines of my parents' divorce I realized that most lawyers do not get to work exciting murder cases on a daily basis. And that sometimes you have to represent someone you don't like to make the big bucks. Cross lawyer off the list. 

     So I'm fifteen, still hooked on Harry Potter, however certain that I will not become a Bengal Tiger or a lawyer, and I start to really think about the things I like to do. I like to read and I like sports. I start working at the YMCA--sports referee and lifeguard (AKA glorified babysitter, but with good breaks for reading and homework). My college basketball dreams are crushed by my orthodontist who tells me I will only be 5'8". A minute bush in my family of trees.  However, my teeth are flawless. 

     I take the greatest (and toughest) class of my high school career, AP Literature and Composition, and know that books are for me. What could be better than getting paid to read, right? So I went to college and majored in Spanish and Creative Writing--but I'm not a writer, I'd tell my classmates, I want to be an editor. 

     I taught fitness classes and wrote for a few local magazines. I loved college. I loved my job. Then I had my first desk job writing and editing promotional material and grants and it was the worst thing of my life. I hated going to sit in the same spot every day. It was 15 hours a week and I couldn't wait for the semester to be over so I could be done with it. I graduated. What to do next? I thought I'd be moving to New York to become a big name fiction editor. What was I going to do with my life if I couldn't stand the thought of sitting at a desk? I took a year. Realized I could, actually, write things that people were interested in. 

     In the last month of 2013 I bought a house, then in April 2014 I became full time at my gym. Then in June 2014 I graduated with my Masters of Fine Arts degree from one of the top 5 low residency schools in the nation. In October 2014 I taught my first online creative writing class. All things that seem so grown up, but yet, is this what I want to do when I grow up? Do I want to teach some day? Do I ever want to give up the varying routine of personal training and getting paid to work out?  Does all this crap really even matter? I mean, I have great friends, the best family, I can run, I love my job and I have time to write. But is this what I am when I'm grown up?

     It's a weird feeling not having the answer to that. When I was little I used to say with so much conviction that I wanted to be a vet. Now, as a grown up, I only know these things:

1. I want to be the best dog mom ever. 

2. I want to write. 

3. I want to run.

4. I want to be the best version of myself every day, but every day, I want to be myself. 

    I guess that will have to do it for now. Unless I finally get my invitation to Hogwarts.