Oh wow! I grew up to be a writer, an artist and a coder! How cool is that??!

Image from http://drawn.ca/

I can remember being a little girl, thinking about all the things I might want to be when I grew up. A dancer, a doctor, a pilot, a writer, an architect, a set designer...there were soooo many things I wanted to do.

And then there was the short list my parents gave me of acceptable choices:

• Doctor
• Lawyer
• Engineer

Meanwhile, I filled books with my stories and poems, spent hours and hours drawing pictures (mostly of horses or horse-related things!), and then once I had access to computers at school, playing around with code.

I applied to college with a double major of theatre and architecture. My parents immediately changed that plan, and it became premed. Then when it became clear that organic chemistry and I were never going to get along well, I was allowed to switch to English and psychology, as preparation for law school.

One year of law school at age 21 was a disaster...I was the youngest in the class by several years, and my heart was far from in it. It was an epic fail in so many way. Then there was more university time, and a couple of grad degrees. In Political Science, of all things. And still, through it all, I wrote and drew and painted. I bought a computer and played around with changing things, coding and learning how it worked.

One day, I got a job as a feature writer on a small town newspaper. And I loved it! And I wrote and took photos. And I entered some graphics in a small town fair art show and I won! And I bought my third or fourth computer.

Then there was a writing job for an online catalog site. And there,  I got to learn all about Search Engine Optimization (SEO - the stuff that goes on behind the scenes in a website.) I learned how to write and edit HTML. And because it was a small company, I also got to select images for our pages and articles, and work with Photoshop, too.

A few years later, I got another job where all of those same things were needed, but for a big company...

And so it goes...

Now, my days are spent online, writing articles and posts and other content, creating and fixing the HTML code behind our company's pages, and at home, doing my art.

And yet it was not until yesterday, as I was riding in the car, on the way home from dinner with my husband that it occurred to me that I have grown up to do all the things I loved to do as a child! I make my living by writing and coding and doing art!

Now I ask you...for someone who took so many other paths, and who was directed away from all she loved sooooo many times, how absolutely awesome is that???!

Thanks, G-d. Thanks, Universe. You got me exactly where I was meant to be :-)