Sign this petition for more realistic cartoons. Just kidding.

This may look like a harmless toothpastefordinner.com cartoon.

OK, so it is.

But who hasn't felt like at one point or another your own youthful idealism kinda got out of hand? I mean, I should be in a mansion right now with my movie-star husband and our cocker spaniels. Um. I'm just about there. I just gotta get a movie-star husband, a mansion and a couple dogs.

And we twentysomethings were told we could dream ridiculously. Remember the feel-good cartoons? We could all be whatever it is we wanted to be.

That's not true. As a very wise movie once noted, "that's crap. If that were true, the world wouldn't have janitors, because no one wants to clean toilets their whole lives." OK, so that's not a direct quote. But I mean it.

But looking back at where I thought I'd be now, realistically speaking, it's kinda humorous. I dreamed way big, up until about two or three years ago. Then I reevaluated. I mean, my bank account and my shopping habits decided that being a starving writer/artist wasn't going to cut it for me.

I changed my major like, eight times. I wanted to do everything, or nothing. Everything paid better than nothing, so I chose that. What I wanted to be: a photographer (bleh), a preschool teacher (and I was, for two years), an English teacher (summer vacations rule), a psychologist (ha), a novelist (my attention span is too -- what?), and a journalist. My changing-majors kick got way out of hand. But I wanted to try all my options. Why? Because I could.

Who told me that? Would I be in a better spot now if I'd started with journalism? I don't know. Dang.