I never really knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. For a while, I wanted to be a garbage man, because they got to ride on the back of the truck. Then I wanted to be a veterinarian, because I love animals.
As I got older, the length of schooling required and the pay became the largest determining factors of my career choice. But I still wasn’t sure. I thought about being an animal trainer or a veterinary technician.
When I first started college, my aim was elementary education. But when I did some job shadowing at a local elementary school, I determined that I would get too emotionally involved with the children, especially the ones who had it rough. So I switched to business management so I could open my own fancy pet hotel. Then I got pregnant, and that dream kind of disintegrated, which was fortunate, because as an environmentalist, that is not something I would be happy doing at this point in my life.
Armed with that associates degree in management, I entered the work force as a customer service representative and waitress — eventually just waitress. Not exactly what I had planned, but it was work.
Then I decided to upgrade to a bachelor’s degree. I thought about teaching again, but the counselor at the college talked me out of it, proclaiming that it would be too difficult to find a position in that field. I settled on a double major in accounting and business management. I was in the top of my little class, but it was boring. I was motivated by money. I just wanted to get a job and make some steady money. But by the time I graduated, I found out that an accounting job wasn’t so easy to acquire either.
So I got an office job that required a high school diploma and started attempting to impress. I got fulfillment out of improving processes, but my heart wasn’t really in it. Where my heart was, was on the fifth floor – IT. Not to work there. Nope, there was a man up there. I married him a few months later.
Since then, I’ve had another baby and become a stay-at-home-mom — a position I’ve always wanted. But now that my mind is freed from the mental tasks of a job, I’ve had plenty of time to think while making baby happy, a process that takes up about 98% of my day. And since it takes up so much of my day, I haven’t had much time to pursue my dreams.
Dreams. I never really had them until now. It was always, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” The question was always based on an occupation. A job. Like that was my only option. I never knew what I wanted to be, what job I wanted to acquire, because I never wanted a job. I still don’t.
I want to change the world. I don’t want to go somewhere every day, perform tasks, make money, and spend it. Well, most people probably don’t. But most people do want and need stability. But I like change, and I like instability, and I like risk.
I want to take life by the handlebars and steer — steer it straight uphill, swerve through obstacles, sweat, breathe hard. Only, in my dream, there is no top of the hill. There is no downhill.
Because in my dream, I’ve been put here to do something, make a difference, change things. In this short life I’ve been given, I’ll help people, I’ll help the animals, I’ll help the Earth.
I’ll write books. I’ll speak. I’ll volunteer, donate, inform, teach, and love. I’ll love, and love, and love, and love, until the day I die.
I will never stop. I will keep trying, keep sweating, keep striving, devoting, giving until the last day of my life. There is no retirement in my dream. I’m going to pound the ground and create a ripple that never ceases.
In my dream, that ripple will become a tidal wave, a tsunami of love, wisdom, generosity, strength, courage, determination. These are the things that will change the world.