When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

My daughter says she wants to be a doctor, who treats little kids, animals, and stuffed toys.

I think I used to say that I wanted to be a doctor when I was her age, but it might have had something to do with the fact that we lived across the street from a huge hospital. I gave up on saying that when I realized that I am a generally queasy person, especially around blood. At some point in high school I remember saying that I wanted to work in international relations — I can’t tell you what I meant and I am not sure I knew at the time. I was studying lots of languages and having fun with Model UN, so that probably had something to do with it. In college I thought I was going to be a lawyer until I realized that it was actually something I thought my parents would like me to become, although they never said that. I toyed with the idea of getting a Ph.D. in economics until my favorite economics professor told me that academia was definitely, absolutely, most certainly not for me.

I ended up going into consulting because I won a scholarship sponsored by a huge consulting firm and for which I competed to help pay for college. It took me another seven or so years to find something I really loved to do and wanted to become — an entrepreneur building a media company. There was no way that I’d know this until I tried a million — OK, a few — other jobs and career paths. And even now, as much as I love what I do, I am fairly certain that there are at least several other jobs I’d love to try out — being a full-time writer, public speaking, teaching.

I think I’ve finally gotten used to the idea that the idea of a direct and straight career path or the so-called career ladder, is outdated. Most of us have career paths that look more like zig-zags, perhaps even with breaks that we might take to travel (when we’re younger) or to take care of our kids (after we become moms). (Some statistics suggest that Americans between the ages of 18-38 change jobs/employers 10 times.)

But for most of my career I had this ongoing angst about not feeling like I was where I really wanted to be, not being able to answer the question of what I wanted to be when I finally grew up, career-wise. I remember making a ridiculous New Year’s resolution when I turned 29 that by my 30th birthday I’d figure out my dream job and work on getting it. Obviously, this isn’t something that you can force yourself to do and enough career experts agree that trying to figure out the rest of our live while we’re in our 20s is a terrible idea.

I know it might seem odd to think about what you really want to do, job-wise, while the economy is in a tailspin, markets are crashing, and hundreds of thousands of jobs are being lost. But I actually think that this is a pretty good time to do it. No jobs are safe any more and if you’re been sticking with yours because it’s the more secure option, this is a good time to at least let yourself consider some alternatives you’ve been keeping on your mind’s back-burner. (You know, to take an hour to go to a cafe and think about stuff like if money weren’t an issue, would you choose a different career?)

So, do you know what you want to be when you grow up? What did you think you wanted to become when you were younger? Did you follow a career path you expected?