It really is. And you know, I will list my jobs over the years if it makes anybody feel better 'cause I promise you every one of them is ridiculous in some way.
I studied to become a costume designer. I started learning it and related skills by the age of six and that's no joke, because my mother and grandmothers were very crafty. I knew how to weave on a four-harness loom by the time I was four years old that was almost three times as tall as I was at the time.
And then I got into a car accident. A bad car accident. I can't lift anything over 5lbs again. I fought that. I fought that really fucking hard through another three years of college and it just would not work; I kept doing my body more damage and it kept breaking down. Then, I did, because I'd worked so long and so hard for that.
And I made jewelry -- had been selling it with my mom since I was somewhere between 8-10 years old or so. So I dove into that headlong while studying commercial illustration, which I was seriously not bad at at all.
Then web design.
Then, through a complete quirk on the part of the best teacher I ever had in college, I made designer doll clothes for a living for about 4 years; won a big competition with one of the designs, too. That broke down thanks to a shifty postal agent stealing packages, however, and I had to do something else.
So it was back to the jewelry. Dove in headlong. Made amazing progress. Got published, even! (If you go to the Amazon.com page for a book called 'Beadazzled' with a red cover, flick through the additional image -- the two page spread with the gingko leaves necklace is one of the three in there of mine, won stuff in that, too, and all the other names in the book but mine? Nationally known.)
Then for some weird reason I started making Poser content. Really. Seriously. I made Poser content for about 8 years and I did pretty well; things changed with the tech and until I replace the comp I can't do more of it, but I will probably, eventually, because creating imaginary people visually is often as much fun as creating imaginary people in text to RP.
Then I started dyeing yarn. Really. Three years of it. Sold stuff at shows, got stuff sold through others -- but it died then due to a bookkeeping screwup.
Back to jewelry. It's a mainstay that always works.
But seriously. It happens. They all were real jobs -- successful, too, in most cases. But it can happen.