I wanted to grow up to be a TV news woman.

While some girls had kitchen sets, my play area proudly displayed a beat-up Cricket (the doll) box, propped up on Legos. Behind the rudimentary ‘desk’ was my most comfy Strawberry Shortcake chair. I would sit here for hours and report to my Carebears the general happenings of my parent’s life...and occasionally the mishaps of BooBoo the rabbit.

I was a fantastic on-the-spot news reporter too...much to the dismay of my family. I’d hide where they couldn’t see me, listen to their conversation, then present my findings to a wider audience. Apparently, these audiences were not always appropriate. And the day I ruined my grandmother’s 60th Birthday surprise ended my short career in news reporting.

Imagine how ecstatic I was when I secured an internship at the finest new station in my city! How wonderful: the lights, cameras, REAL news desks! I was assigned as assistant to the woman I had watched on TV since I could crawl. She was witty. She was beautiful. She had fabulously, perfect hair. And she was a raging witch!

The woman made my life a living hell. I didn’t learn about the inner workings of a news station (or maybe I did). Instead, I became her masterful juggler. She was a ball, her husband was a ball, her co-anchor lover was another ball, and HIS wife was yet another ball. Juggle, juggle, juggle, until one day I dropped a ball which ended in the co-anchor’s wife chasing my newscaster in her car and both cars slamming into a telephone booth.

Whoops.

I guess I really wasn’t cut out for that line of work.

I did try once again in New York. I lasted 3 weeks at an internship in the building of my dreams. Big, beautiful Rockefeller with tiny, beautiful people. I probably would have lasted too had it been any other time of year. But it was Holiday party season and I spent two nights with another intern shooing couples out of offices, barricading doors against angry spouses, and babysitting alcoholic big wigs (it was my own drunk boss who stuck her tongue in my ear that had me booking the next flight home in the morning).

So with this dream smashed into dirty, tiny pieces before me, I moved on to other jobs that made me very happy. But I’m learning quickly that no job task should define you. There may be new jobs in my future but the only thing I want to ‘be’ when I grow up is just as I am now. Happy. (and loving the one I'm with)