When I Grow Up...

Starting in junior high school and especially in high school people start asking you what you want to be when you grow up. What a person wants to do for the rest of their life is a huge decision and yet we expect a fourteen-year-old to have the answer. And maybe they do, maybe they know what brings them happiness and joy for the rest of their lives. But most times they don’t.

I know when I was fourteen, I thought I knew exactly what I wanted to do. I was going to go to the Culinary Institute of America and own my own bakery. But at the same time, I remember going to a Christian youth conference and we had to go around the room and introduce ourselves and say what we wanted to be growing up. I remember my answer had nothing to do with baking. I said I wanted to become a writer.

I grew up writing poems and stories. I was always proud of what I wrote and thought it would be so fun to do it for a living. But somewhere along the line, I knew it wasn’t practical and changed my mind to baking. Once I changed my mind, I went full force into wanting to bake, which is why I had decided I needed to go to the Culinary Institute of America. It didn’t help that I was obsessed with Duff Goldman at the time, and he had gone to CIA. But my parents convinced me that I needed to start at a culinary school in town and if I still wanted to go to CIA after finishing that program then they would help me do that.

I graduated high school and went to the eighteen-month culinary program in town. My goal was to finish the program, get a job at a bakery, and then get an associate degree in business so that I would be prepared to open my own bakery. I finished the program and applied to every bakery in town and never heard back from any of them. So, I went ahead and started at community college to receive my associate degree.

While completing my courses, I fell in love with business. I decided to go for my bachelor’s degree. While getting my degree I felt a desire to work in nonprofit organizations. I thought my end goal was to become a Chief Executive Officer of a nonprofit organization. I knew to ever do that I would need to obtain a master’s degree. So, without a second thought, as soon as I finished my bachelor’s degree I enrolled in my masters program.

I was working full time at a nonprofit organization and in school full time for my master’s degree. Then COVID hit. Luckily my master’s program was all online, so it wasn’t affected. But work was to an extent. I still had to be there every day for a full eight hours, but I had nothing to do. I worked on my schoolwork as much as possible but even that didn’t kill enough time. I was sitting at my desk one day and a random story idea popped into my head. I hadn’t written anything for fun in years. Probably since I was a kid. I started writing all these little ideas for stories down but never seriously wrote any of them.

A couple years went by, and I had finished my master’s degree and switched jobs. My new job kept me busy for about a year and a half. Then I kind of hit a lull and found myself with time on my hands. During this time I was also experiencing some health concerns that had me anxious beyond belief. I felt trapped by my anxiety and powerless to do anything about it.

One day I was sitting at my desk, worrying about my health and I felt like I needed to channel that energy somewhere else. I opened a blank word document and just started typing. I really didn’t expect to take the story any further than whatever I wrote that day. I figured that would be enough to get the anxiety to subside. But somehow the ideas for this story just kept flooding my mind and it kept getting longer and longer and soon enough it had chapters. I was somewhere in the middle of writing this story when the opportunity to go the Karen Kingsbury Writing Conference came up.

I tried every excuse not to go. Its too much time off work. It is too far away, its not financially feasible. Luckily, my sister told me that all of that didn’t matter and I had wanted to go to the conference the year before and hadn’t so might as well go that year. I bought my ticket for the conference and six months later it was time. The conference was amazing and I met some amazing people. Table Six as we came to call ourselves have been talking since the conference almost two years ago. We encourage each other in everyday life and in our writing journeys.

Through the help of the conference, Table Six, and most importantly God, I actually finished writing my book. It was amazing to see how a story that started as a way to get rid of anxiety turned into a full fledged book. I have been working to get the book published and hope that someday soon God will put it into the hands of the right publisher so the world can read my book.

All of this to say that the dream you have as a young teenager can be reality. Even if it does not seem practical I encourage you to pray about the decision and take steps to making it come true. Who knows if I had stuck with it maybe I would be a published author by now. Just let the Lord guide your steps and He will lead you down the right path, no matter how impractical it might seem.

Much love,

Victoria