What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?

By Jessica Breazeale

When I was little, I wanted to be a Broadway star. Name in lights, singing and dancing well into my 90s, probably still doing eight shows a week when I needed a walker to get to the wings. That was the plan.

These days, if you stopped me on the street and offered me the lead in the next big musical, I’ll admit I’d pause. Old dreams don’t die easily. But I wouldn’t take it — because somewhere between then and now, my definition of “growing up” quietly rearranged itself, the way it tends to do when nobody’s looking.

Seasons will do that. And right now, as summer loosens its grip and fall starts sneaking in at the edges, I’m feeling it: life runs in seasons, too. Some are loud and ambitious, all hustle and headlines. Others tap you on the shoulder and ask you to slow down and pay attention.

I’m in one of the quieter seasons. I want to notice more — the trees, the birds, the actual moment I’m standing in instead of the six after it. I want to be more intentional with my thoughts, my actions, and especially my words.

That last one is a problem, considering my job description.

As a public relations practitioner, marketer, and communications instructor, words are basically my whole toolbox. I talk for a living. I write for a living. I teach other people how to do both. And the longer I do it, the more I notice how easy it is to keep talking — filling space, answering before I’ve really listened, saying something instead of the right something. Restraint is not a skill they cover in PR school. I’m having to learn it the hard way, one bitten tongue at a time.

So here’s my new answer to the old question. What do I want to be when I grow up?

A tree, I think. Or possibly a bird. I haven’t fully committed, which feels appropriate for a woman in her quieter season.

A live oak, specifically — nothing scrawny. Live oaks stick around for centuries, arms stretched out wide like they’ve got nowhere else to be and all the time in the world to prove it. People park lawn chairs under them. They propose under them. They take a hundred photos, and none of them do the tree justice. A live oak doesn’t hustle for attention; it just stands there being wise and grounded, and somehow that’s enough. Frankly, it’s a better career plan than most of what I had at twenty-two.

Or a bird. Because if we’re being honest, birds out-sing every Broadway star I’ve ever heard, and they didn’t need a vocal coach or a standing ovation to do it. They just ride currents I can’t even see and go wherever they’re going, and I have never once seen a bird apologize for taking up space. I’d like to know what that’s like.

Maybe that’s the appeal of both — one is rooted, the other is free. One teaches you to be still. The other teaches you to be curious. And maybe growing up was never actually about picking a lane. Maybe it’s about learning when to be the oak and when to be the bird, and having the sense to know which season you’re in.

So these days I’m not asking, “what do I want to be when I grow up.” I’m asking something bigger: what’s the bigger picture?

I don’t have the whole answer. Nobody does — that’s sort of the point. But I’m starting to think it’s this: be rooted enough to know who you are, and curious enough to keep growing anyway. Pay attention to the season you’re in. It’s trying to tell you something.