So how did I become an astrologer?  How do any of us become what we are?

So how did I come to be an astrologer?  And more generally, how do any of us become what we are?  That brings us back to the old "nature or nurture" question: was I born an astrologer, or did I become one?  I never met an astrologer until I was 28 years old, so I doubt it was "nurture."  Was it something inherent in my DNA (or my chart!) that compelled my curious twelve-year-old self to pick up a copy of Linda Goodman's Sun Signs on my almost-stepbrother's coffee table one day, spend the next few hours devouring it, and decide, "This is for me"?  I spent the next seventeen years going to school, performing as a musician, getting my heart broken, and secretly dreaming of someday being an astrologer, until finally in January 1990 I saw my first paying client.

All these years later, it's not the job I thought it would be.  Some days I don't even like it.  Most astrologers don't make a lot of money, and I'm no exception.  I spend a lot of time trying to explain to people that I'm not a palm-reader or a clairvoyant, and I take a lot of heat from some people for being an astrologer--scientists, fundamentalist Christians, most of whom want my head on a platter.

So why do I keep at it?  It's simple: although I may not like aspects of the job, and although I sometimes suspect if the universe really wanted me to be doing this, I'd be doing much better at it--at the end of the day, I'm an astrologer.  I can't help it--it's how I see the world.  I like the language, I like the symbols, I like talking to people about their lives.  So, as much as I might make threatening noises from time to time about packing up my bag of astrological tricks and moving on, it looks like this is what I am.

Just as many of us have unrealistic expectations about relationships and their role in our ultimate happiness, so we often expect that the right career will bring us bliss.  But finding your career path is, in many ways, no different than finding your life's partner: you know the right one when you see it, and it's not a matter of making a choice so much as bowing to the natural order of things.  And along with claiming what is ours, and claiming what we inherently are, come responsibility, challenge, insecurity, fear, doubt, and yes--every now and then--real joy.