It is not what I always wanted to do, but it’s adequate. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was at an age when I should have been making real decisions and taking action. I didn’t realize my love of history could be turned into a career until it was too late to do anything about it. I was a musician/actor/model, which I loved and I still do both, but always had a clerical “day job” because I’m good at it and music/acting/modeling aren’t the most reliable sources of income. My Mom insisted I learn how to type when I was younger because “you can always fall back on that.” Unfortunately, you can also fall forward into it, so to speak, and get stuck if you don’t realize where your true interests lie.
I ended up becoming a paralegal purely by happenstance when I was between day jobs and a fellow musician told me his wife was quitting her job and suggested I go talk to her. She had me come right over and I was hired on the spot. It turned out I had a real knack for it and it paid so well that I continued doing it. I didn’t stop until I got married and didn’t need to make as much money. While I was married I was able to really pursue acting and television work full-time, even doing a show about local history (which is the closest I’ve come to ever having my dream job) but when I got divorced and was a single parent to two children, I immediately went back to legal work because I needed to make as much money as possible to support them and there I remain.
I still play music and act. It’s interesting that after all these years my legal work and artistic lives have finally collided. I landed my current job (paralegal at a boutique entertainment firm) seven months ago. In this job I meet all sorts of famous (and not so famous, but equally talented and important) musicians, actors, producers, directors, you-name-it, etc. and I have more creative opportunities than I’ve had in years. In a way, I’ve come full circle. I get to be a musician/actor and a paralegal at the same time (and I get to dress like it, which is one of the many things I love about this highly atypical law firm)
All that being said, if I could do it all over again, I’d have gotten a history degree and work as a museum curator or as a history researcher/preservationist. That’s the dream job. My advice to you is not to let what you are doing to support yourself keep you from trying to do what you really dream of, because if you don’t act decisively when you are younger, life has a way of forcing you to defer it, possibly forever.