When I was a young girl, I entertained four very different career aspirations. Each was fleeting as the next, but all as fervent as a youngling’s whims can be. The first, believe it or not, was to be a mapmaker. You know, that most ancient of professions, where one spends their days hunched over parchment, tracing coastlines and mountains with painstaking precision. I imagined charting uncharted lands and giving names to the nameless; what a perfect pursuit for someone who spent far too much time getting lost in the woods while on vacation.
Of course, I was unaware that, by the time I was old enough to hold a pen, all the significant landmasses had already been mapped out, and Google Maps was soon to be a thing. I’m nothing if not anachronistic. (Then again, now we have No Man’s Sky with endless worlds to map, so maybe I got to live one of my childhood dreams in some convoluted way, at least.)
But then, the allure of cartography faded as quickly as it had come, replaced by the allure of the pharmacy. I thought pharmacists were like modern-day alchemists, conjuring potions that could cure ailments, or at the very least, provide a good night’s sleep. I loved the idea of being the person who knew all the secret ingredients to make people.
Unfortunately, the cold, hard reality of chemistry soon crushed this dream. It turns out that pharmaceutical alchemy requires a strong stomach for memorizing chemical compounds. Well, my love for mixing “potions” couldn’t compensate for my profound disinterest in understanding what I was really mixing.
Undeterred, I set my sights on a new ambition: real estate tycoon. In my preadolescent mind, this seemed the most glamorous job of all; imagine owning entire skyscrapers and the sheer power of owning a monopoly on overpriced apartment rentals! I envisioned myself in sharp suit dresses, closing deals with a firm handshake and a knowing smirk.
However, I soon realized that the closest I could get to real estate domination was playing Monopoly. Even then, I was terrible at it. Something about paying rent to my brother on Boardwalk until I was bankrupt quickly lost its appeal. Not to mention, the idea of dealing with actual tenants seemed as appetizing as drinking cold coffee; it was too bitter to swallow, no matter how much sugar you added.
But through all these fleeting ambitions, there was one that lingered. It was one that clung to me like a tribble in a grain storage compartment: I wanted to be a starship captain. This wasn’t just any childhood fancy; this was a burning, unquenchable desire fueled by watching endless reruns of Star Trek (The Next Generation, obviously).
I wanted to sit in that captain’s chair, give the order to engage warp speed, and explore strange new worlds, preferably without the annoying bureaucrats back at Starfleet Command breathing down my neck. Unfortunately, I was born in the wrong century for that. In my era, Humanity decided to focus on developing things like smartphones and social media instead of warp drives and transporters. Thanks a lot.
So, what’s a girl to do when she can’t be a mapmaker, a pharmacist, a real estate tycoon, or a starship captain? Well, she does what any rational person would do. She becomes a writer of absurd and strange tales. After all, writing allows you to chart uncharted lands, mix potions (metaphorically, of course), buy and sell property (in fictional realms), and, most importantly, captain starships—if only in your mind.
It all started with a little book called Charlotte’s Web. E.B. White’s masterwork was my gateway drug to the world of storytelling. I was entranced by the idea that words could create worlds, especially ones where spiders were literate and pigs could be saved by the power of friendship and good PR. Inspired by this revelation, I began mashing my favorite stories together in a haphazard, Frankensteinian fashion. I became a literary mad scientist, stitching together bits of Star Trek with Charlotte’s Web, throwing in characters from my favorite cartoons like Ducktales for good measure. The results were bizarre, to say the least, but I was hooked on storytelling.
What started as a hobby became an obsession. Before I knew it, I was writing stories full of absurdities—talking animals, intergalactic real estate deals, and starship captains with a penchant for concocting strange potions in their spare time. My tales were odd, offbeat, and occasionally nonsensical, but they were mine. They allowed me to be all the things I could never be in real life. They’d allow me to explore all the roads not taken, and some that likely never could ever exist.
In the end, I suppose I did find my way, just not in the way I expected. I may not have made maps or mixed potions or owned skyscrapers or commanded a starship. But I’ve created worlds, told stories, and, most importantly, I’ve made people laugh. So, who needs warp speed when you can travel anywhere at the speed of imagination?
~ Amelia Desertsong
