To Be or to Have a Snack: the Melancholy Swede

I have never had any kind of career path. It's been more like being lost in the woods and stumbling upon occasional wildflowers and fuzzy bunnies while trying to survive the gnats, ticks and swampy areas. Throw in a lots of monotonous cicada chirping, a few ominous rustlings in the brush and the occasional howling in the distance, and you've got my working life. More "Endurer" than "Survivor." I bumbled along for years, had a baby who is now five, and I'm back in the woods already. Enough with this metaphor. Let's just say, I haven't had a clue.

Suddenly, things changed! I know what should have been my destiny! I should have been a Swedish detective. Call me Wallander. I have been reading Henning Mankell's Wallender series and I don't want to come up for air. I let Comet watch a shameful amount of Scooby Doo yesterday so that I could brave the inhospitable Swedish weather with my alter-ego, Kurt Wallander, trying to figure out who brutally murdered the elderly farmers to steal 27,000 kronor in an old briefcase. I am the fortyish melancholy, sarcastic yet brilliant, extremely tired yet tireless detective. So what if I was born in the wrong place, I'm not a work of fiction and couldn't detect my way out of a paper bag? Dammit, I should have been a police detective. Never mind that I scare easily and say things like, "Oh, well..." and, "What are you gonna do?" in the face of challenging circumstances. In my heart, I am the Chief Inspector.

I remember, years ago, when I was bemoaning my lack of life direction, a nice guy said, "Well, think of the section you head for when you go to a bookstore. I always head for the computer section and now I'm working on my degree in computer engineering. Where do you go in a bookstore?" I replied, "Fiction." He thought a moment and said, "Maybe you could be a fictional character?" I could. I really could!