Today @ptklein, @laurenkrizel and I wandered over to the National Zoo for a while to enjoy the weather (it’s free, and you can literally just walk in–one of the best things to do on a pretty day in DC, if you ask me). Being in the zoo sparked all of our more adventurous sides, and naturally we got to talking about safaris, traveling the world, and long-shot career options like nature photography, etc.

But Paul brought up a great point, and it made me start to think. We’re the first generation who isn’t brought up to be just one thing in life. Very few of us anymore set out to be only doctors, or only businessmen. I’d even be willing to bet that if I surveyed 500 of my closest college-age friends, very few of them would be able to pinpoint one answer to the age-old question, “What do you want to do when you grow up?”

I’m far from being able to answer that question, too. My degrees are in marketing and communications, with some study in statistics. So where will that leave me? In a PR firm? Doing marketing for some big company? I’m not sure that’s where I want to be.

Instead, what if I put my marketing and social media skills to use in a high-profile political campaign? Or took them into humanitarian work abroad? Or used them to document the natural world on wild African adventures? Or maybe I could take them into the government, working in the White House; as an elected official connecting with my constituents; or maybe even in the State or Defense Departments, working to keep our country safe and secure?

See what I mean? I can envision thousands of possibilities for my skills, and who knows, my degrees might not even be relevant five years from now. For all I know Twitter and Facebook will be a thing of the past, this blog will be a relic, and I’ll be on to bigger and better things.

As long as it’s exciting, I’m ok with that. If there’s one thing I fear, it’s living a boring life. I’m pretty confident I’ve avoided that so far, and with a little luck I’ve got nothing to worry about in the future. My life-long goal is simple: to have good stories to tell when I’m old. I want to be a 21st-century Indiana Jones (perhaps minus the Nazis), one adventure after the next, living, learning, and, well, living.

What do you want to do? What adventures can you imagine in your future? Sound off in the comments, or chat with me on Facebook or Twitter.

In case you didn’t hear, Twitter has signed a deal with Yahoo for a somewhat more advanced integration than it has with Google or Microsoft. A conversation I had just yesterday with a friend at Agence France-Press (AFP) got me to thinking, and now this announcement has started to confirm my theory:

Twitter is starting to sound an awful lot like a social wire service.

Check below the cut for the rest.

Here’s a passage from the LA Times story about the Yahoo deal:

The partnerships with Twitter and Facebook will roll out later this year. The deals will enable users to take material from both sites without having to leave either one, said Jim Stoneham, vice president of communities for Yahoo. Specifically, users will be able to access their Twitter feed on Yahoo’s sites. They will also be able to update their Twitter status and share content from Yahoo. And Yahoo search and media properties will include Twitter updates.

Look at it this way. Imagine a news-ticker, on all your news sites, that streams breaking news not just from the major news organizations (of your choosing, of course), but also from your friends, family, and professional contacts. Imagine a news article where the headline was pulled from Twitter, the content was a digitally combined series of blog posts by highly-ranked bloggers, and the images were pulled from Flickr, Twitpic, and yFrog. Just imagine the fundamental shift in news, business, advertising–you name it–that would come from this.

Sure, real journalism would still survive–in fact it would likely thrive as more and more people look for authentic, reputable news sources. But for breaking news stories and immediate analysis of the events you are most interested in, what better to give you the news then your favorite news sources and all your friends?

I know that nowadays, it’s rare for me not to hear a piece of breaking news on Twitter first. Most of the things on TV are at least 30 minutes old, and the newspapers? Ha, they couldn’t break news if their industry depended on it… well, I won’t go there.

But could this Twitter-Yahoo deal be edging towards something much, much larger? We’ve all heard that Twitter’s goal is to be the “pulse of the planet”, could this be the key to achieving that goal? How will news agencies react? How will wire services, the AP, AFP, Reuters, all of them, survive? If more people are breaking news faster, and providing free, high-quality photos, videos and audio for these events, what justifies the high cost?

There’s a lot to think about here, all of it purely conjecture. But it’s fun to imagine. What do you think about the Twitter-Yahoo deal? Is it just another deal like they’ve got with Microsoft and Google? Is it on the verge of something better, like I’m theorizing?