jamelah.net

When I was in fifth grade, everyone in my class had to participate in a speech contest called “When I Grow Up,” and speak about our dream career, why that was what we wanted to do, and who our hero in this field of work was. I would’ve been ten at the time, and by then I had dreamed about and discarded the following career paths: teacher, astronaut, brain surgeon, ballet dancer, aerobics instructor, pet store owner, television personality, and singer. (Heh. Singer. Oy.) So anyway, when I tried to figure out what I was going to do my speech about, I had to decide between fashion designer and lawyer. And I picked lawyer. Because of all of the public speaking.

Right.

Now, just so you know, I inherited a strange quirk from my dad (well I inherited a lot of strange quirks from my dad, but anyway). My hands shake all the time. It’s neat, because I get asked why I’m nervous on a pretty regular basis. Anyway, it’s not really bad when I’m calm, but when I am nervous, it’s unbearable, and the more I think about how I need to get my hands to stop shaking, the harder they shake. So that makes things like holding notes during a speech really fun.

I didn’t discover this off-the-charts hand tremor until speech day, when I was standing in front of my entire fifth grade class, speaking about why I wanted to be a lawyer. I heard a classmate whisper something about my shaking hands, which caused them to shake harder, which caused someone to giggle, which caused them to shake harder still, and of course the moral of this story is, thanks so very much, dad.

These days, I’m actually a very good public speaker (though I’ve learned never to use notes written on paper if I can avoid it), but I am not a lawyer. Which is cool, because I spent the whole research period for my speech wishing I’d picked fashion designer instead. Lawyer. Whatever.

Anyway, I didn’t really mean to write about any of that. It all just sort of happened when I started typing, and I’m too lazy to delete it or come up with a smooth segue, so now I’m going to get to what I meant to write about. Okay.

I really don’t know what I want to be when I grow up. The thing is, I’m not really sure how much longer I can continue using that line, considering the fact that I’m 25 years old, and everything. I was probably supposed to stop using it a few years ago, but whatever, I’ve never been much into doing things the way I’m supposed to.

My point, however, is that I’m starting to freak out about the fact that since I graduated from college, I’ve had two long stretches of unemployment (thanks, economy!) and several jobs that have taught me what I don’t want to do. And while it’s certainly valuable to know that I’d rather have my head run over by a truck than write for a newspaper ever again (though I still get offers — what’s up with that?), I think I’d find it exponentially more valuable to know what I would like to do. Call me crazy.

Go ahead. Call me, crazy.

So anyway, all of this blather to say that yet again, I am going to have to start the ol’ job search soon because my term is going to be up near the beginning of next year. And while I’d like to take a few weeks off to do the nothing that I so richly deserve, I want to avoid the months of painful boredom and unemployment if at all possible.

Ah, if only LitKicks paid me the way people think it does.

Yeah.

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