I am retired and stil fascinated with Barbara Walters

Fascination is different from a dream. quieter, more patient, and in some ways more reliable. It doesn't announce itself. It just keeps showing up.

When I was a little girl growing up in the bayous of southwest Louisiana, I used to sit and watch the Today Show with my mother.

I was fascinated by Barbara Walters.

She was one of the first women on television who seemed to take up exactly the space she deserved. Confident, curious, completely herself — and the room always shifted when she spoke.

Not because I wanted to become Barbara Walters. Not because I had some grand career plan. I was simply captivated. She seemed so poised. So intelligent. So comfortable talking to people. She asked questions that made people reveal themselves. As a little girl, I didn’t have the language for any of that. I only knew that whenever she appeared on the screen, I paid attention.

There was something about her that drew me in.

At the same time, I was fascinated by another world that seemed impossibly far away from the one I lived in. New York City. The artists. The musicians. The writers. The bohemians. The creative people who seemed to gather in little coffee shops and apartments and somehow make a life out of ideas. From the bayou, it felt like another planet.

I didn’t sit around dreaming about becoming a publicist. I didn’t have a vision board. I didn’t have a five-year plan. I certainly didn’t know that one day I would leave Louisiana and move to New York City. I simply felt drawn to something. Something about that life fascinated me.

I didn’t know then that fascination was a different thing from a dream. That it was quieter, more patient, and in some ways more reliable. That it didn’t announce itself. It just kept showing up.

And then life happened. Marriage happened. Children happened. Jobs happened. Responsibilities happened. Like most women, I got busy building a life.

The fascinating thing is that those early fascinations never completely disappeared. They went underground. They waited.

Thirty years later, I found myself living in New York City. Not as a tourist. Not as a visitor. I was there. I built a career in the classical music industry. I worked with artists. I spent time in creative circles. I lived in the very world that had captured my imagination as a child.

I remember standing backstage at Carnegie Hall once, watching a conductor prepare to walk out to the podium, and thinking: how did a girl from the Louisiana bayou end up here?

I didn’t realize it at the time. I was too busy living it.

Then yesterday, while editing a video from a recent conversation about retirement and the future, something struck me.

I spent five hours editing that video. Five hours. Learning how to trim clips, rearrange conversations, build a thumbnail, and figure out what would make someone want to click.

And suddenly I thought: good grief.

I’m doing it again. I’m talking to people. I’m interviewing people. I’m telling stories. I’m helping people discover something about themselves.

That little girl watching Barbara Walters would recognize this.

Not because I’ve become Barbara Walters.

Because I followed the fascination.

I sat with that recognition for a long time. And then I thought about the women I write for — the ones who read that and feel a small ache because they can’t point to a Barbara Walters moment. Can’t identify the childhood fascination. Don’t have a thread they can trace back.

Not everyone had a childhood dream. Not everyone wanted to be something specific. Some people genuinely don’t have a dream they can point back to. And that’s okay.

I think we sometimes put too much emphasis on dreams and not enough emphasis on fascination.

Dreams can be very specific. Fascination is much more subtle.

Maybe you didn’t dream about painting. But you were always drawn to color and beauty.

Maybe you didn’t dream about writing. But you always carried a notebook.

The breadcrumb isn’t always a dream. Sometimes it’s simply what keeps catching your attention. What keeps pulling you forward. What keeps making you curious.

And perhaps that’s one of the great gifts of this stage of life. We finally have enough space to notice. To look back and ask: what has fascinated me all along? What have I always been drawn toward? What keeps showing up in my life?

The answer may not lead you exactly where you imagined. It certainly didn’t for me. But it may lead you somewhere surprisingly familiar. A place where you suddenly realize that what you thought was a random interest, a passing fascination, or a childhood curiosity was actually leaving breadcrumbs all along.

That question — what has fascinated you all along — is exactly what Mike and I spent an hour exploring together. The video is right below. In it, we talk about how to recognize your own breadcrumbs, how to begin following them, and what happens when you finally give yourself permission to do that.

I think you’ll find yourself in it somewhere.

A future is not a carefully constructed plan.

It’s a willingness to follow what continues to call your name.

If this piece stirred something in you — a fascination you’d forgotten, a thread you’d stopped pulling, a breadcrumb you almost walked past — I’d love for you to bring it into the room.

Every Tuesday, a small group of us gather on Zoom inside The Daily RE-WIRE. Not as a class. Not as a workshop. Just as women who are done waiting for permission to follow what continues to call their names.

When you become a paid member, I’ll send you a complimentary copy of Building Believable Trust in Yourself — because following a breadcrumb requires one thing above everything else. Trust that what catches your attention is worth following. Be sure to send me a direct message with your email address to recieve the free booklet.

The guide is waiting. The room is waiting.

And if something in this piece made you pause, nod, or feel a little less alone — please give it a heart before you go. That one small tap tells the algorithm this conversation matters. It puts these words in front of another woman who needs to hear them today. She's out there. Help me find her.