Could my ten-year-old self have been right?
I remember the exact moment. I was about ten. I was riding bikes with my mom down the palm tree-lined street in our unnecessarily ritzy neighborhood in Florida. I say “unnecessary” because even a ten-year-old knows all Florida is is sand and heat and humidity and the eternal quest for air conditioning or water. But I surprisingly don’t remember those things. All I remember about this moment is telling my mom what I wanted to do with my life:
I wanted to be a TV newscaster.
And so I set out to become one, grabbing all the journalism experience I could get my hands on. I interviewed friends we had who were in the biz. I shadowed local reporters. I did internships (ENDLESS internships, just ask my sister). I got my degree in broadcast journalism. I produced our school’s newscast as well as parts of the news for the community access station where my school was located. After college, I hosted and produced a segment for the DOD TV station while Ryan was stationed in Italy. After that I moved to live, small-town news as a producer (because by then I’d determined I liked calling the shots more than being on camera). And then I was on to big city news.
And then I got burnt out. Too many overnights and 3am shifts and holidays and all I could see was my life flashing before my eyes - and I was only 23. So I got out of “the biz” and stayed in related fields but without an emphasis on production. I toyed around with a lot of other things, even applying and getting accepted to a program for my Master’s in Social Work. In my “spare time” I dabbled in non-profit fundraising and grassroots activism. And I was always obsessed with what to be when I grew up.
Then I began dabbling as the producer and host of GovFresh.TV and I got a new job where I’m back to having a significant amount of my time focused on producing a show. And I realized this is the stuff I enjoy the most. No, it’s more like I re-discovered it; it was my ten-year-old self who first realized it all those years ago. I for sure don’t have a career path mapped out and I’m not sure what I want my end goal to be, but it’s refreshing to have a piece of the puzzle figured out and to discover that I should have more faith in myself, in my initial reactions. There are still many other things I want to do in my life (like maybe get a doctorate in theology or write a book or play in a band), but I was beginning to worry I would have to carry the angst of this initial self-discovery into my 30’s when everyone tells me that’s what your 20’s are for.
I’m quite, quite sure I still don’t have it all figured out, and sometimes I feel like I’ve wasted the past few years as I struggled to find my calling. But fortunately more than a few good things have come out of that. The endeavors I dabbled in taught me so much about myself and along the way I discovered a love for the social web, technology, social activism, politics, and other things that continue to shape the way I want to spend and invest my time.
And since I was self-employed during those years, I can pretty much spin my past any way I want!
February 03 2010 08:50 am | consulting and the future
February 8th, 2011 at 2:00 pm
[...] I was ten, I decided what I wanted to be when I grew up - and then proceeded to eventually do it. When I was 16, I picked out what college I wanted to go [...]