When you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up? What are you now? Are the two connected?
When I was 10, I wanted to be a surgeon, it was a dream of mine that started even earlier then 10 years of age. I read all that I could about early doctors and especially the first women doctors, their singular devotion to education and then medicine, all in the name of healing those who were in need, impressed me and inspired me. My dream continued well into high school until I encountered chemistry class where I lost my focus and let myself be disheartened by my difficulties with that particular class. I managed to convince myself that I didn't have the intellectual talents to be a doctor. I made myself very sad over what I perceived as a serious deficiency in the science subjects, so I changed my focus to business administration but that didn't last long.
After a year of college I then decided that a career in law would be a good idea. I kept at that goal until I was accepted to law school with a partial scholarship which I deferred for a year, that deferment became permanent which I don't regret because I don't feel that being a lawyer would have given me the fulfillment that I thought that it would. I am fairly certain that my drive to be a lawyer was mostly fueled by the lure of money because at the time being a lawyer was all the rage, it was THE career to have if you weren't going to be a doctor.
I am happy being what I am: a homemaker, a mother and an aspiring writer. I only wish that I hadn't sold myself short to myself in my high school years, if there was anything that I could do to tell my younger self by some miracle of a do-over, I would tell myself to have faith in my own abilities, my tenacity and my determination. But that is neither here nor there. That ship has sailed.