Today’s Daily Prompt over at WordPress is: When you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up? What are you now? Are the two connected?

Well, as luck would have it, when I was 10 I dreamed of becoming a mid-level Canadian public servant who could affect positive change in a line department on AoM 3 of the MAF.  (Note: AoM = Area of Management for those who don’t speak bureaucrat.  Now that I’m confident all of you fully understand my frame of reference here, we’re moving on!).

Having set this goal, 10-year-old me put her emerging project management skills to work and charted a critical path which saw this achievement acceptably met in 2009-2010.

Yup:  I was TOTALLY this girl:

(I know I just linked to this in a previous post, but it works here too)

You might think – given I have now obviously achieved all my goals – that, much like Cinderella, I am now living happily ever after.

Sadly, though, in 2011-2012, TBS opted to no longer evaluate AoM 3.  Really, if I’d known this back in Grade 5, I would have set a different career goal.

But in all seriousness?  Thinking back to Grade 5 me, I’m not sure what she wanted to be when she grew up.  I have vivid memories of what I wanted to be at other ages (baker, marine biologist, Olympian, journalist, author…).  But at 10?  At that age, I mainly wanted to be President of my own Unicorn Club à la Sweet Valley Twins.

Seriously, I organized my friends into a Unicorn Club and even wrote a newsletter. We had a boy of the month and everything – which was embarrassing enough pre-Internet, so I can’t imagine how that would have panned out in today’s world.  But in glass half full land, I’ve just realized that there was a whole Unicorn Club Spin Off Series years after my love affair with SVH so I was apparently TOTALLY ahead of my time.

But other than that?  I wanted to coordinate dances for school projects; rock all the tricks on the cats cradle; get my All Round Cord in Girl Guides; and swim faster than ONE SPECIFIC GIRL in my swim club.  Oh, and when we played that M.A.S.H game where you cycle ’round to randomly determine if you will live in a Mansion, Apartment, Shack or House when you grew up? I’d cross my fingers for mansion, but was secretly satisfied with house.

So, what was the question again?

A brief refresher: When you were 10, what did you want to be when you grew up? What are you now? Are the two connected?

Answer: While I don’t think 10-year-old me would have been able to NAME what it is I do now, she’d have been pretty happy with the idea of a house, a few kids, and a job with the government.  After all, my dad worked for “the government” and until MUCH later, I had no idea what he actually did all day.  But our life growing up was pretty good and he was home and around – and while he kept trying to push me into ORANGE TAB Levis rather than the pricier and thus far cooler RED TAB Levis, we still went to Epcot; could afford sports and music programs (which encouraged my math skills and coordination and made me WONDERFULLY well-rounded); funded my braces; and generally had enough to make me feel like we were keeping up with the local Joneses.  And really, from my 10-year-old perspective, that was what pretty much mattered.