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Remem­ber when we were lit­tle, and you would utter “When I grow up, I’m gonna be…?” Whether prompted by a teacher, par­ent or rel­a­tive, we usu­ally had an answer ready at the tip of our tongues. As I write this post, lis­ten­ing to some music and com­ing into a clear after a cou­ple glasses of wine, it struck me that I feel like a big kid. I was think­ing about the var­i­ous turns my “when I grow up” pro­nounce­ments have taken. Some of those dreams, iron­i­cally, have come full cir­cle.


Going back as far as I can remem­ber, I seem to recall want­ing to be an artist and writer when I grew up. I used to find a quiet space and write short sto­ries. I would always leave oppos­ing pages blank for illus­tra­tions. A lot of the sto­ries were about trav­el­ing across the coun­try in a tricked out con­ver­sion fan, explor­ing all the places I would read about in books. Funny, because the thought of rid­ing around in a van sounds a lit­tle creepy. I digress.


At some point, the art would over­take the writ­ten part of the sto­ries. I became con­sumed with all forms of art, and knew I wanted to be an artist of some sort when I grew up. I was rarely with­out col­ored pen­cils, crayons, chalks, water col­ors, brushes and paper. I never ven­tured into acrylic and oil paint­ing, though I try my hand at them in art camp. YES, I said it. I went to art camp in the sum­mers when I was a kid. I was seri­ous!


Though I played my share of sports in junior high and high school, I never had dreams of becom­ing a pro­fes­sional ath­lete. I main­tained my inter­est and love of art. In high school, I began to express my artis­tic voice through more tech­ni­cal representations—drafting. That’s it! I want to be an archi­tect when I grow up. I took every draft­ing and ren­der­ing course offered. I went to a num­ber of career fairs and would only apply to col­leges with accred­ited archi­tec­ture pro­grams. I got to col­lege and ran into a brick wall called cal­cu­lus. Uh oh! It was time to reeval­u­ate what I was going to be when I grew up because there was NO WAY I was get­ting through cal­cu­lus. (Of course, in hind­sight, I gave up too eas­ily. How­ever, there was a lot of sh*t going on with me at that time. But that is a topic for another time.)


I took some time off and even­tu­ally reen­tered col­lege. I went major­less for a year, or so, until I stum­bled upon Eng­lish. Though I enjoyed the lit­er­a­ture com­po­nent of the major, I really loved the writ­ing courses. There I was, back to writ­ing. Eureka! I want to be a writer (again) when I grew up. Well, to be more accu­rate, I started to enter­tain the idea of teach­ing lit­er­a­ture and writ­ing schol­arly papers. I began to roman­ti­cize to idea of roam­ing around a col­lege with a tweed jacket and cords. I stopped short of a don­ning a beret, though.


For some rea­son, I drifted off the artis­tic course and got into pol­i­tics and the law. I took on the almost cliché path of so many in DC. Work on the Hill. Go to the law school. Go down­town to become a lob­by­ist and ‘make that money.’ (Shame­less ref­er­ence to a pre­vi­ous blog piece.) Even­tu­ally, I made my way to where I am now–a reg­u­la­tory coun­sel at a fed­eral agency. Though these expe­ri­ences have been good for pro­fes­sional growth and pay­ing the bills, I’ve always felt a notice­able void of artis­tic expres­sion. I’m sure col­leagues from any of the jobs I’ve held over the nearly 20 years in DC would tell you that I’m always draw­ing or doodling–and not always at the right time. Through all this, I never once thought, “I want to be a lawyer, politi­cian or lob­by­ist when I grow up.”


A num­ber of yeas ago I was seek­ing an emo­tional and cre­ative out­let to take my mind of some heavy things I was going through. I went through a num­ber of fits-and-starts with artis­tic expres­sion. First I enter­tained the idea of becom­ing a writer again. I started to read a num­ber of books and mag­a­zines on devel­op­ing my voice. Per­haps I hit a seri­ous block, but I couldn’t find the focus to write. Frus­trated, I strolled through art gal­leries almost daily. I went to the library and began to look through great pho­to­graphic works. On a whim, I bought a film cam­era on eBay and started shoot­ing. I took a cou­ple of classes to learn the con­trols of the cam­era and how to develop film. Soon came another the pur­chase of another film cam­era, and then dig­i­tal. I am con­vinced, at the ten­der age of 43, that I want to be a pho­tog­ra­pher when I grow up.


I am encour­aged by my wife and count­less num­bers of other peo­ple who are career-changers. These are peo­ple who didn’t suc­cumb to fear of cast­ing off the expec­ta­tions of fam­ily, friends, and com­mon social con­ven­tion to pur­sue a dream. Now, I am putting as much of my time into learn­ing the craft and devel­op­ing friends and net­works within the com­mu­nity of photographers.  I can’t help but see the thread of art and writ­ten word that has run through my life. I have begun to won­der, if life has sim­ply come full cir­cle and my pho­tog­ra­phy is my art and main­tain­ing a blog is my writ­ing.


In the end, though, I think one of the key things to remem­ber is that you don’t have to “grow up.” There’s absolutely noth­ing wrong with keep­ing that child-like excite­ment about, and inter­est in, becom­ing _____ in due time. I sus­pect most of us have some­thing we want to do, but too often we sup­press and get caught up in the thing we think we have to do. It’s never too late, though. Pur­sue your pas­sion.


What do you want to be when you grow up?