I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

Don’t get me wrong, I love my life and I’m very happy with where I’ve landed. When my childhood dreams of becoming a veterinarian were dashed, I got my degree in something I thought maybe I’d be good at - Business Management. I focused on Organizational Theory (please, don’t snore too loudly …. you’ll wake the freakin’ dead), got a job in Human Resources, and pretended to be a grown up for about five years.

After I realized that my profession of choice wasn’t necessarily correct for me at the time (that, & the comment on my annual performance review that I was “abrupt, abrasive and abusive” - seriously - my boss hated me, really wanted me to succeed, felt that was constructive criticism), I started thinking about what I liked. What did I want to do that:

• wouldn’t make me want to scratch other people’s eyes out,
• wouldn’t make me want to puke with the absolute sickening sweet necessity of being nice all the time.

I decided that something in the technical line of study would be more conducive to my, erm, somewhat impatient nature when dealing with idiots others. (snort) I ended up at Marshall University in their Computer Science program - the only woman in the program. (Do y’all see the pattern?)

I met Mr. Hot (who was in the Management Information Systems side of the program….less math, more business-y type stuff), got married, had Shortman, graduated, moved back north and found a job over the next two years. Head spinning yet? I felt like Regan - only older and with bigger boobs.

I was happy in my little COBOL programming world for a while (told you I was old). Then the bank I worked for was bought…..so I went to a new department - programming in FoxPro and Visual Basic. Then that bank was bought. (Patterns. My whole freakin’ life is about patterns.) I moved to web programming and design. Want to do your banking online? Apply for a mortgage? I lived through Y2k man! The only time I stayed completely sober on New Year’s Eve.

And then, someone apparently thought I’d become management material, and they took me away from the keyboard and put me back in front of people. I started using that old organizational theory shit. I now have a real title, a real office, and “people”.

And then, this bank was bought.

I have a job to do. I committed to running the show until these signs are swapped out and these systems are shut down, and everyone is either out the door or all snuggly working for the new guys. I wonder sometimes if I didn’t do myself a mis-service by staying. What will be left for me in the area after I send everyone away with the pats to their heads and their shiny reference letters? Will it be a gold star on my resume to be able to say that I have experience shutting down a business? Hmmmm. I wonder who wants that kind of expertise on their senior management staff?

I wonder what it would be like to work in a completely different field. Maybe I could do a reduced nursing program. Or, like Cupcake, teach. I could become a consultant, but I don’t know that I want to spend that much time on the road. Or go into law-yering.

Funny how time passes so quickly. I started that COBOL job 15 years ago on September 14th. Yes, 15 years ago this coming Friday. (And hey, Employee Awards program? Where’s my freakin’ pen and pencil set?????)

—- Maybe I should go back into Human Resources. I mean, surely I’ve mellowed over the years? Oh, little would they suspect that I was the original Triple-A girl. But y’know? the mellowness? most likely exhaustion and age. Let’s just pretend I’m like a fine wine, shall we? —-

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