What do I want to be when I grow up?

Man, I pondered that question for years. I think on some level, though I love massage therapy, I still do. How do we find what we are supposed to do? Is there a grand calling out there for all of us? I don't really know. What I do know is that the road to me being what I am right now was a long and twisty one.

So background time...for those of you that don't know Brent and I got married when we were 18. Let me let that sink in for a minute. Yep, 18, graduated in June of 86 got married in December. Brent joined the Navy and away life went. My mother is fond of saying that I was born a grown up. Another day and another blog I will talk more about that, childhood stories are fun, but for their own time. Brent joining the service was a good solid grown up decision for a couple of kids to make. It meant steady income, housing, and medical coverage. Looking back on it we would have switched that up and done the college route instead, but at the time it was a good decision to make.

So his career path was set and signed away. That left me. At 18 and no degree you don't have a lot of options in front of you. Food service and retail. I did both. My parents are older than most parents of my generation and instilled in me that depression era work ethic. If you have a job, I don't care what the job is, you do it well. So I always did well no matter where I worked. But there is only so long you want to do food service or retail work. I decided that really the smart thing would be to do bookkeeping. I am good with numbers and no matter where we were to live I could get a job doing books. And so I switched to back offices in retail stores. Would work the floor as needed and work the office the rest of the time. And we rolled along with this arrangement until we moved to California.

California has a pretty constant flow of people coming into the state. Due to that they have a pretty large pool to draw from for employment. What I soon discovered is that I wasn't going to get a job as a bookkeeper without a degree. The other thing that California has is a spectacular Junior College system. Now with Brent in the Navy we could only guess we were going to be stationed in San Diego for a few years anyway so this worked perfectly. I enrolled in San Diego City College for $5 a credit hour, maximum $25 a term and got my degree in Accounting. My professors wanted me to go on to UCSD and pick up the two additional classes I would need to take my CPA exam but I didn't want to be a CPA, I wanted to be a bookkeeper. That's enough, thanks.

After graduation I got a job at a wholesale pottery company, with my experience and my brand new piece of paper I was able to get on as their full charge bookkeeper. I spent the next few years working for a variety of companies as different versions of bookkeeper/office manager. I also took three years off in the middle to stay home with Christopher. Then the first shift in career happened. Moving back from Colorado Springs to Portland, Oregon we found ourselves in need of a letter from a company saying I had a job waiting for me so we could get the loan on our house. The advertising agency I had been keeping books for before we moved was coming to the realization that the person they had in their AE position for one of their biggest clients was not working out. Jack, my former boss, asked me if I wanted the job. He assured me he would teach me anything I didn't know and that the rest was just tracking numbers, which I had done for them before in my old position. So I took a big leap and said yes.

Now, Jack hadn't told me that he was in the absolute last stages of selling the company to his partner and by teaching me anything I didn't know what he really meant was he would run for the door just as soon as I had my desk unpacked again, and good luck to you! Maybe it wasn't that bad...but it sure felt like it the first few months. There were 4 of us in the agency full time and we had a freelance bookkeeper that would come in a few days a week. Between the 5 of use we did it all. And I learned a lot very quickly. I realized just how sheltered I had been from the day to day dealings when I had worked there before.

So the whole time I am doing the job I am still thinking in the back of my head, is this it? Is this what I am supposed to be doing? New people would start at the agency and they would be so excited to FINALLY be in Advertising! This was their goal. This is what they went to college to do. And there I was handling the agency's biggest client and a small handful of others and I had no clue if this was even what I wanted to do.

Now in every office there is that person that will rub your shoulders when you are stressed and tired. I was that person. And every time I would rub someone's back or shoulders they would say, you are really good at this you should do it for a living. Now the first few times you hear that you think, awww...isn't that sweet. Then you start thinking, hmmm...maybe I should. I like doing it, I am good at it. It makes people feel good. Hmm....

Brent and I talked about it and he bought me books on massage and books on reflexology and I read them and practiced more and thought, yeah, this sounds good to me. So I looked into schools. I had the paperwork in hand to start night school. It was going to be very tricky to manage as my travel schedule for work was picking up more and more, but I really thought this was it. And then I chickened out. Completely backed out of it. Just couldn't see how I could manage full time work, school and family life. It just wasn't for me so why even bother. I called the school, withdrew my initial application and gave up the idea.

Or so I thought.