I recently finished Barbara Sjoholm's Incognito Street: How Travel Made Me A Writer and it has gotten me thinking on all sorts of things about what one should do with their lives and the path they should choose to figure that out. Sjoholm had a small inheritance from her grandmother and used that to travel to Europe and "find herself as a writer" at the age of 20. She went to London, lived in Barcelona, hitchhiked all over and spent a lot of time trying to figure life out. (This was back in 1970 btw.) She was joined by a girlfriend and the two of them spent a bit of time flirting and wondering if there was more to their relationship than friendship (remember - 1970) and ultimately Barbara broke out on her own again and ended up in Norway for awhile - and then back in Spain.

In the middle of all of this was a lot of drinking, some political activism, work as a nanny, work onboard a ship, begging her father for money (unsuccessfully), trying to figure out if the boyfriend back home is the "one" or if she really is gay and most importantly wondering just how in the hell she would ever be a writer if she couldn't get words on a page. (Doesn't that sound familiar?!) What's really cool about the book (other than the whole coming of age story) is that she also had some epiphanies when it came to writers and writing (Colette, Borges, etc) and writes in detail about that - about how other writers affected her life. Ultimately she became a writer and also publisher - she co-founded Seal Press.

I enjoyed this book a lot (it's cake to read and a lot of fun) but it made me wonder about how sad it is that we don't get the time to figure ourselves out when we're young - at least not in my case. Somewhere along the line we went from people who had to go to work young to survive, to people who had to go to college and get on a career track right away to survive. Case in point - I graduated at 17 and stated college three months later majoring (from day one) in Aviation Management.

The whole thing is insane when I think about it now.

My only interest in aviation came from Top Gun (it was 1986) and all I wanted was to date a pilot. A pilot who looked like a Top Gun pilot- especially the volleyball scene. There was a family connection to a nearby private college though, through the aviation program and there you go. Aviation (not flying but management) was going to be a good living for me and if I wanted to take an elective or two about literature or history or writing, well that was fine.

But that wasn't what I was going to do in real life - make no mistake.

Everything I was good at in high school (honors hist and english, editor of the literary magazine, newspaper reporter) was not good for the real world. It was just fooling around. I was never in doubt of that. I don't know why everyone felt this way (and it has been explained to me that I loved flying back then - although I have no clue how a poster of Tom Cruise means you love flying) or why I was supposed to be the proactive one at 17 ("if you really wanted to do something else then you should have said something" - yeah, like that would have gone over well at dinner). Once upon a time college was where you went to see what was out there - to learn, not to plan the rest of your life in one career field starting at age 22.

I wish I had been brave enough to run away, but I wasn't. How I got where I am meant a lot of wasted time (and I can't stress that enough) which frustrates me still, but nothing can be done about it. Except this.

My son already loves animals - big time. He's always looking through books about them, looking for them in the woods, picking up frogs, snakes, etc. Everyone says this is typical and I'm sure it is, but I wonder how many kids are really encouraged in it. I mean how many are told to stop bringing that into the house, or go do your homework. Gerald Durrell wasn't told that, and neither was Steve Irwin. (Or Charles Darwin for that matter.) So how much of who we end up is not because we outgrew the childhood interests but because they were taken away - pushed aside by the folks who said we had to get serious?

How much of our lives - from childhood on - is about making a living and not making a life?

My family is quite proud of my literary work now, and also quite certain that it is due to their pushing me into aviation at a young age. If I hadn't gotten that degree they tell me, then I never would have gone to Alaska, or worked in aviation there, or written this book. And they are probably right. What they don't think about, but I do, is where I might have gone if they had let me be a writer from the age of 17. What would I be writing now if only they didn't worry so much back then about my career? What would I be writing now?

How would any of us end up if we had the luxury to find our way when we were young - to see the world, to observe the world - to enjoy life.

My son likes frogs and bugs and I say "go get some more sweetie - go out and get some more!"