BLOG WATCHERS: growing up is hard to do

When I grow up.... what did you say you wanted to be when you grew up as a kid? How do those interests influence your work, and how did you settle on being an artist?

I've always wanted to be an artist.  I may not have known what that would look like or be like as an adult, but I knew I really loved making things.  Drawing pictures of my pets, painting the trees, making fairy houses in the creek, and working on dirt sculptures in the woods.  My solution to doing these things when I grow up was to be an artist.  Now, that's not to say that I didn't have other ambitions as a child too.  For a while I wanted to be a vet and save all the animals that were hurt.  Sometimes I wanted to be a lawyer and argue my way to a win every time.  Oh and for a while I really wanted to write mystery novels and pretend to be a secret FBI agent.  But those responses were always followed by "...and an artist".  And as I got older I started to drop the other ideas and just stuck with the artist idea.  I didn't share it a lot with other people because they just didn't understand.  (Not that I entirely understood it either.)  I was tired of English teachers saying things like "ok so you will draw but what do you really want to be when you grow up?"  They weren't listening to me.  I was telling them I wanted to be an artist, end of story.  Even at a young age I started to understand that the adult world did not think that "artist" was a real career, or at least this was the case in SmallTown, USA.  So I stopped talking about it and kept on sketching and painting.  
Then in high school I really invested myself in art.  Kimberly Evans, my high school art teacher pushed me- really hard.  And she became one of my go to people.  She taught me about life outside of our small town, took us on field trips to colleges with art programs, and encouraged me to sketch daily and apply to college.  She knew I had it in me way before I ever did.  I can not praise her enough.  I still call her to this day to talk about whatever I'm working on and for free pep talks.  Without her I probably wouldn't be a Blog Watcher today rambling about my artistic goals and such.  
Anyways, back to the question: how do those interests influence your work?
I'm not sure that they do or if they do how so.  Maybe its something I should visit.  Brandon's response to this question is a lot more interesting than mine because he has a body of work that relates to his childhood ideas of superheroes.
I guess I'm interested in the root of who we are which relates to how I grew up in the woods and such.  Making things out what naturally exists, but that may be a stretch since lately I've been incorporating more and more materials that are less natural.  I'm not really sure.  Maybe I need to think about it a little more.     

In short, I guess I've always known I was going to be an artist.