At age 8, I wanted to be Elvis.

At age 10, I wanted to be a pathologist.

At age 13, I wanted to be a surgeon.

At age 16, I wanted to be a web designer.

At age 18, I decided that I would continue taking classes in Spanish and get a degree in International Relations. I also decided that an American college education was not for me; I’ve always been more of the “independent learning” type, rather than a day-to-day, homework every night kind of person. So I shipped myself across the ocean to a little town on the North Sea, St Andrews, and began my mission to turn myself into a State Department ambassador. Four years later, I walked out with a Master’s degree and returned to northern Virginia having decided that I simply was not ready to become a civil servant. My parents, both former Army officers, were rather against this idea, so I temped for six months at various government and government-affiliated agencies, all of which provided me with good office experience but which also strengthened my resolve to make a success of myself in the private sector.

And where better to do that than in New York City? In February of 2006, I moved to North Bergen, New Jersey, just outside of the city, where I could keep my car (and my rent!) without signing away the lives of my first five children. It was at a job fair near the Meadowlands that I met and charmed an executive from a major financial firm, who offered me an interview an hour later and hired me within two weeks. As a financial adviser trainee, I earned what I considered to be an extremely healthy paycheck as I plowed through four-inch study guides in an effort to pass the NASD exams necessary to become a full-fledged financial advisor.

All of this was all well and good, and I passed two of the exams (the Series 7 and the Series 31, for those of you who know the business) and took the life and health insurance course before I realized … wait a minute. First, I don’t want to be a salesperson. I had tried that, briefly, back in Virginia, and disliked every minute of it. And second, I especially don’t want to sell a product that I don’t back 100%. Given the nature of articles I had read about the company, which mentioned that even those high up in the ranks didn’t invest in the company’s funds, it seemed as though this was a wise decision. So, after six months, I made my departure.

Two months, a move, and a stolen car later, I received a call from an HR executive for an enterprise software company. “How would you like to work six miles from your house?” he asked, to which I responded with great enthusiasm, “Would I!” It was the beginning of a beautiful – albeit tumultuous on occasion – relationship with the enterprise software company for which I still work.

In essence, it took five jobs and fifteen months to decide what I wanted to do, but at last I seem to have found it. I’ve become the marketing professional that I never dreamed I’d be, and I get to work with personable, knowledgeable people from whom I’m learning tricks of the trade on a daily basis. Whatever happens here – and you never know with a start-up – this place will serve as a strong foundation to my career. And that’s what this blog is all about.