I'm writing this because someone told me that I should remember what I wanted to do when I was 16 or 17, and do that again. When I was 16, I wanted to be a journalist. A hard news-covering, print newspaper journalist, to be precise. Just like Lois Lane. I had a moderate obsession with the mid-90s mediocre melodrama, Lois & Clark: the New Adventures of Superman. I'm not even sure why exactly. I think I found Dean Cain attractive-ish, but beefcake pretty boys have never been my type. Not that I've ever had a type. Actually, it was Lois who intrigued me most. She was an excellent reporter: cunning, super smart, and stylish. She had the most exciting beat at the Daily Planet, or at least the most interesting stories in Metropolis kept finding her, and she was definitely the apple of Perry's eye.
Lois Lane girl crush aside, I am pretty sure my love of the news was sparked well before that. Let me back up a few years. Starting around age 4 or 5, I loved this made for TV "movie" called Too Smart For Strangers. It was a low budget non-animated Winnie the Pooh documentary for children. The Pooh character (man in bad bear suit with weird voice) sang songs about stranger danger and then made the Piglet (man in bad pig suit with even weirder voice) watch real life video examples of kids being approached by strangers. Then they talked about what the kid did right (scream, run away) or wrong (take candy, get in potential murderer's car). Oddly, those documentary parts were my favorite thing about the whole movie! I loved seeing the kids engage with "strangers" in "real life." Anyway, after about 4,000 views of this, I got tired of it and began watching 20/20. I was probably 9 or 10 years old by then. Before you judge, remember this was the late 80s/early 90s and Barbara Walters and Hugh Downs hosted, so it was actually full of real news (albeit human interest) stories. Why my parents let me watch that at age 9, we will never know. These are the same parents who let my sister and me watch Dirty Dancing in early elementary school. Granted, we had no idea what the sex scenes were, nor did we understand the whole abortion thing, so maybe their parenting wasn't entirely negligent?
Anyway, thanks be to early viewing of a Winnie the Pooh mockumentary and 20/20, I was really fascinated by the news. And by 16, my most obvious skill was writing. I read a lot. Like, stacks and stacks of books. I was the kid who would take a book in the car to read on a 15 minute ride. I think because I read so
much, I learned to write quickly and more clearly than most people I knew at my age. In my mind, I wasn't that creative, though. An exciting career, and one that I could be good at, was one that would never be boring. And journalism brought the excitement, thanks to Lex Luther or some other catastrophe, to me. That way I could be part of the action, ask questions, and write about it. I forgot about that, probably about halfway through college. Maybe I spent too much time with business majors, or maybe I took note of how hard it was for my peers at The Michigan Daily to find internships and jobs in print media, even in the early 2000s. I'm embarrassed to admit that I even stopped reading for fun very often. Sure, I read for my classes. I was never the kind of student who faked it with Cliff's Notes. I genuinely loved to read, until I had to do it so much that my eyes felt like they were sifting through sand in order to blink at night and I developed a noticeable twitch in the morning (cough law school cough). So I didn't read books that weren’t assigned during the school year. Sure, I read The Economist and Vanity Fair, but only because I could do it on the tube/Metro or bus or in short spurts of determination to feel like a human being before I fell asleep at night.
At 16, I think I knew myself better than I gave myself credit for. The things I enjoy the most in my current work life were all part of my first career “ping,” the reporter instinct. I am interested in humans. I like to ask questions (preferably with an excuse such as, “I'm writing a news story about this!”), hear people's stories, and then spread them around. It was the best way I knew to connect. And at ages 16 and 30-something, connection was and is one of my most important values. Because if you learn that other people loved and identified with the worst parts of a mediocre melodrama TV series in a similar way that you did, for example, the world seems friendlier. Easier to manage.
My point is, the kids really are all right. In fact, they are wise. Taking a trip down memory lane— remembering your strongest abilities and how you wanted to work at various times in your earlier life— is a wonderful way to identify your values and what you are still good at. This is just one way I have helped clients rediscover their best work.