I did have a calling, honest! Quite a few of them, actually!

Have you ever met anybody who has become what (s)he actually dreamed about when a kid?

"Since I was 4 I knew my calling was software engineering!" or "My greatest childhood wish was to become a plumber and here I am!" or "I've been into data entry big time since I got hold of the keyboard when I was 10 months old!"

My first calling hit me when I was about 3 years old and visiting relatives in the country. They had chickens, couple of horses, pigs and three big glorious black and white cows.

I liked the cows with their big sad eyes, long lashes and cool moooooo-noise. But I was totally won over when I saw auntie squeezing milk out of them! She actually let me to have a go (it was an old and VERY patient cow) and eventually I succeeded in squirting a bit of milk into the bucket.

I decided to become a milk maid there and then.

What a life would it be, I thought, you get to mingle with cows every day. AND do that fun milking thing. Wow!

My mother killed my dream. She explained me I'd have to be up VERY early every morning. That was a no-go. I've valued my beauty sleep since the tender age of 16 months.

But I still needed some plans for my future so I did a bit of brainstorming and came up with a great alternative - a vet! Surely vets wouldn't need to wake up early!? And doctors have even cooler equipment than a bucket and footstool. I'm talking about syringes here! Stethoscopes! Otoscopes! Them little hammers that make your leg bounce up!

I saw myself examining horses tonsils and administering aspirin pills to the chicken.

Life was going to be so much fun!

Eventually it dawned to me that being a vet I would need to deal with hurt animals on daily basis. Hurt animals made me cry.

So there - another no-go.

I think I was playing with an idea to become a doctor with human patients for a while but it never got hold of me properly, obviously wasn't fun enough.

Once I started reading my future job choices started to reflect the current preference in literature.

Archaeologist - History books and historic novels
Lawyer - detective books
Teacher - some cheesy novels with teacher protagonist
etc

I'd say one of the few things I never wanted to become was a journalist.

I ended up working in media for twelve years.
Then I packed my bags and became Foreigner by Default. That actually WAS a calling, I guess. Only a very different one.

So, confess, who did you want to become?