When You Grow Up

When i was little everyone was always asking me what i wanted to do when i was a grown up. I would say things like princess, a pop star and crazy things like that. My family and teachers would laugh and say what about a teacher or scientist. It always kind of hurt my feelings that they were dissing my ideas on what i wanted to do when i grew up.

When i was little i had trouble reading. It just didn't make sense to me. It was boring and i didnt have the attention span to sit for a long time to read. I resented when my parents would make me sit down and read. It was so bad that in first grade, i was placed in a special ed class for reading, when i would be pulled from my class to go a different small class of 5 or 6 other kids where we were tutored in reading.

This class changed my life. I can’t remember the teachers name but she made me love reading. From then on, i loved reading, i always had a book with me and i started to perform really well on reading tests. So well in fact that i was moved from special ed reading class to an honors reading class, it was around this time that i started writing.

I write little stupid things about my favorite color and write fanfiction about my favourite shows and movies at the time. The next time someone asked me what i wanted to be when i grew up, i said books, something with books. My english teachers always asked me what with books? Do you wanna write? Do you wanna editing? What about books?

I didn't know yet, all i knew was that i love dbooks, i loved the way they smelled, the way the pages felt on m finger tips. I would spend hours in the library and bookstores, walking down the aisle of books. I would walk around the entire store with my arm outstretched, dragging my hand across the spines of the books.

Until a book catches my eye, i stop to look it over and read the sunopiose, sometimes i like. I pick it up and carry it around with me as i continue to walk around and touch all the spines of the books. I would dream about having my very own library like Belle in beauty and the Beast. The more i wrote my own stories, the more i felt like it would never measure up to any of the books i read and cherished.

I lost some of my passion for it. One time i told my teacher that i was thinking about being a writer and she just laughed and said “There's no money in that.” i was maybe thirteen at the time. I didn’t understand the concept of money enough to make dreams around it. That was the final nail in the coffin of my dream of writing.

I stopped writing for fun and only wrote when i had to, like for a class assignment. I entered high school with the firm idea that i was going to be a book editor. I might not be able to write the next great american novel but i could discover and bring it to life. Even with this i was me with resistance from teachers and family that didn’t believe i could do it or that it wasn’t a good field to go into. It didn't seem to matter to them that i finally had an answer to what i wanted to do as a grown up, an answer that i was passionate about.

They had stopped aking what do you wanna be when you grow up and had started saying you need to be more realistic, think about your future. No one cared anymore about my dreams, it was about how much, money i would make. It wasn't; about what would make me happy. The pursuit of happiness is a human right, so why does nobody ask what would make you happy instead of what do you wanna do?

What would make you happy? Actually listen to the replies, it will surprise you what little can make someone happy.