"Sorry don't get it done, Dude." - John T. Chance, Rio Bravo, 1959
Anyone who has known me for long knows I am a big John Wayne fan. I have most of his movies in some format, books about him and his picture hangs on the wall in my end of the house. I also enjoy the fictional character: Perry Mason. I own every book written by his creator, the jurist Erle Stanley Gardner. Mother has said that when I was younger, I wanted to be Della Street (Perry's loyal, smart and witty secretary). Really, I think I wanted to be Perry. I wanted to be the one so observant and clever as to solve a crime that everyone else was solving incorrectly.
I never became another long-suffering hero like the many characters portrayed by John Wayne on film. I thought about law school for a few minutes but never gave being Perry (or Della) a try. One of my first ambitions was to become a writer. That morphed into being a typesetter, then graphic artist and finishing up "my career" as a bookkeeper. Those vocations were certainly never in my dreams as a kid. Life's funny that way.
Truly, I think I always wanted, in the far back corner of my heart, to be the girl singer in the band. I didn't want to be the star - not a Whitney Houston or Adele. Think 1940s. A girl singer like Helen Forrest, June Christy, Martha Tilton, Helen O'Connell, Frances Langford or, my favorite. Rosemary Clooney. How cool to have Jimmy Dorsey or Artie Shaw or Tex Beneke introduce: "And now, the lilting tones of Karen Davis"? Of course, I would have had to change my name to something a little more "lilting"
But, alas, I am just a hairbrush singer.
Life is just a sequence of one choice after another, some good, some poor. The working jobs I have had since I was 16 were never directed to fulfill my dream. Many of them I took became I needed a job to pay for my upkeep. Some may have led closer to my desire to write, to tell stories but choices made determined the path. Yet, I cannot say I am totally sorry for my employment choices. They took me to places I might not have been and to people I might not have met. Missing those opportunities would have been a bigger regret.
How about you? Are you living your dream? Or, are you making your living your dream? One of my mantras has been "Bloom where you are planted". Wherever life drops you, be the best you, you can. On most of my jobs I learned the tasks and responsibilities as I worked. I had no formal training as a graphic artist or bookkeeper but there I was doing it the best I could. Sometimes we adjust the plan where life has planted us.
I chose to retire early by some folks measuring. The owner of the company for whom I had worked for 20 years had sold the business. That was my cue to step from the 9 to 5 work day into retirement. Now I volunteer more hours and focus more on sharing my writing and stories with others.
The final verdict is to not let our lives become as Perry Mason often said in objection: "Incompetent, irrelevant and immaterial."
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