Your Five Alternate Lives

Today I'm going to plagiarize shamelessly from Babs' Fab Blog "Women on the Verge of Thinking" (www.vergeofthinking.blogspot.com). She asked readers in her post "Your Secret Self" the following question: If you could do anything once, what would it be? This question reminds me of an exercise I performed while volunteering for an adolescent pregnancy prevention group when I was in graduate school. I was a mentor. Part of the mentor's job was to meet once every two weeks as a group and go through Big Picture exercises, the kind devised to get kids hoping to have babies within five years of puberty focused on broader issues, like occupational ambitions.

The exercise I'm remembering went something like this: If you had five lives to live over again and you could have a different occupation each time, what would you pick? It has to be something you can actually earn money doing; you can't say "I'd get paid a million dollars just for farting." But the amount of money earned or the difficulty of achieving success in your chosen field(s) shouldn't be primary concerns. The question is, what five things would you like to do?

The first time I tried this exercise, here were my five:

Astronaut
Performing musician
Nun
Stripper
Chef

The second time I tried it, I ended up with:

Astronaut
Artist
Stand-up comic
Physician
Elite athlete

The third time:

Astronaut
Computer animator
Professional singer
No-kill dog shelter owner
Bartender in a pool bar in a tropical country

The fourth time I can't remember. I guess it's safe to say I like the idea of being an astronaut. And performing in front of people. And exercising my creativity. And, occasionally, leading a simple life in which my daily chores are pretty much spelled out for me.

Oh--and wearing a costume.

What are your five?