What's Your Thing?

Is there something you feel like you missed out on when you were younger? Some path you feel drawn to that you didn't take the chance with back when you had developing talents that could have been harnessed? I think everyone has something like that.
It's not ballet for me. Sure, when I was six or seven I wanted to be a ballerina when I grew up, but I have yet to meet the six year old girl who doesn't want to be a ballerina when she grows up. I was dissuaded when my mother told me two things (they say that the way you speak to your children becomes their inner voice. With three very different parents it's quite the cacophony in here, sometimes). She said 1) that ballerinas have junky feet. Which seemed important at the time but that was before I grew up and realized I have junky feet anyway, so what the hell is the difference? and 2) that they have to go to class every day. I hated school, I always did. (From grade one through college. I just never enjoyed it the way that some people seem to. I was not interested in what they were saying, or at least not in the manner in which they were saying it. And the other kids were dreadful and the teachers were too overworked to attempt to engage the smart kids. I figure it's probably even worse, now, with the horrible state of modern education. Anyway.) There was no freaking way I wanted to go to class even when I was a grown up. PSSH! Of course, now I realize that going to ballet class is not even remotely like going to school.
But oh well, because I know now, intellectually, that I am a super-perfectionist who gets easily discouraged and fatalistic when I feel like I can't do something perfectly right away. It would have been totally awful if I had been put in to a high-stakes competitive environment as a kid. I would have torn myself to shreds and would never have continued doing it long enough to be any good at it. I just wouldn't. It takes all the adult strength of will and disregard for looking stupid that I can muster. In the end it's better that it worked out this way (though I may, of course, still bemoan the fact that my creaky 31-year-old body simply can't do the things I want it too all the time.)
No, for me, the great skill I passed up on that I really think I could have pursued professionally is voice work. No, really. I think I had a certain innate vocal talent when I was younger and I knew that quite well at the time, too. I adored singing. But, as a kid I was utterly convinced that I could basically do anything I wanted to without having to work at it and so I never took voice lessons. I have a miserably flat and raw singing voice, now, because it's never done much of anything, but I think with proper training I totally could have been a singer. Opera, baby, that's where my money is. I freakin' LOVE opera. And when I was a kid I could mimic words in other languages really well. If I could pull off Enya at 10 then I totally could have wrapped my sh*t around the queen of the night's aria from the Magic Flute.

Okay, maybe not. But still.
(Only click play on this is you are prepared to hear the most alien sounds that a human vocal system can produce. 2 minutes in, give it a try, you'll die from the awesome.)

Or, I could have been a groovy lounge singer! GROOVY! When I watch old movies where women (maybe draped over a piano, I don't know) do a little sultry song routine in a club? Total pangs of regret. That is my ideal job, right there. I basically wanted to be Jessica Rabbit when I was growing up. But I thought I could totally pull that stuff out of a hat whenever I wanted it and oh no, you have to actually practice! Sigh...
I'm not saying I could make a respectable living that way (but I don't make one now, either) but I could have at least fronted a band dedicated to covers of Billie Holiday songs on weekends or something.