A study in contrasts. I’m 38 , and still wondering if the career I’ve ended up with is what I want to do with my life. I had brief flirtations with different ideas when I was a kid, in high school, in college, and after–tried something for a while, then drifted away …
My youngest son is 10. He decided several years ago that he will be a chef. He has since collected recipes, cookbooks, and personal utensils. He irregularly volunteers to cook dinner for the family, when he has something new he wants to try. Tonight, he provided just the main course for our meal–it was a bit involved, so Mom did the side dishes.
Have you ever had a meal prepared by a ten-year-old? If you have, I bet it wasn’t steak, marinated in soy sauce and broiled to perfection, and garnished with mushrooms sauteed in butter and olive oil with a bit of garlic. (He ordered a dish along those lines at Applebee’s, and decided he had to figure out how to make it himself. :eek: )
As I said, he’s positive that this is his future career. I’m beginning to think he’s right …
So, anybody here get their life planned that far in advance?
I always wanted to be an author. Ever since I was seven years old, and writing horrible parodies of the novels I read at the time. (I didn’t know they were parodies til I read them much later. God, they were awful.)
I would still like to be an author. I just lack, currently, the discipline to make it happen. I’ve written several novels, but by the time I finish them, they need so much editing IMO that I have to start from almost-scratch.
That doesn’t mean that I didn’t always envision my face on the back of a book.
Cuz you know you’ve made it when your picture replaces reviews. Look at the back of any best-selling author’s book and you’ll see their face. Not the words of their critics.
At seven years old, that was my idea of my future.
I’ve wanted to be a pilot for as long as I can remember (well before 10.) It didn’t happen quite how I pictured but it did happen. And the route I ended up taking was probably the best it could’ve been.
It’s not all roses though. Flying is what I’ve always dreamed of and as such it means that work is my hobby and my hobby is my life. I’m a bit one dimensional and find it difficult making conversation with people I don’t know. I expect they find me quite boring! I’m vaguely envious of people who just live life from moment to moment.
A few times, people have asked me when I knew I wanted to be a writer, and I tell them I don’t know because I’ve always just sort of done it. Right now I’m doing it through a combination of journalism and writing on my own on the side, but I’ve tried other avenues in the past.
When I was a kid, I thought I wanted to be a writer; all through school, I was told how well I write; I’ve written a book and a bunch of articles…
…turns out I have the soul of an editor, though. That’s where I thrive. I’ve been doing it for more than 15 years, but only fully blossomed into the role two years ago, when I got my current job. When I was 51.
Simmons, your family is very fortunate, and I hope that dish was as good as it read! Yummy!
I know what I wanted to be since I was 10. I liked animals, and I knew I liked science and medicine, so veterinary medicine seemed good for me. Yea, I know many kids think that and then they get scared by the blood (not me!), the guts (not me!), the clients (ok, yea, but I found a way around that).
I also was always interested in death and study of dead animals. You know, that dead pigeon on the middle of the parking lot? I wanted to look at it. A dead bat? My dad had to pull me away and towards our car.
I’m going to be a veterinarian this May, and I’m going to continue studies in veterinary pathology. Yay! Guts, blood, and pretty slides!
When I was 8 years old I knew I had a passion for music. I convinced the music teacher to let me join orchestra over the summer and went on to play the violin for about 5 years and the cello for another two. Everyone thought it was a stupid idea, unrealistic, of course you can’t, on and on. I so wish I hadn’t listened to them. I doubt that I would have developed the skills to play professionally, even with their support, but I think I could have at least gone far enough to be a decent adult amateur if I’d been encouraged and given resources.
As I was giving up music I switched to art, at age 14. Again it was considered ridiculous. This time I kinda sorta didn’t listen and went on to study art for real. Kinda sorta. I tend to give up a lot, and then get back in.
I really thought I wanted to be a writer when I was in elementary school. I used to write a lot at that age, was pretty passionate about it, and a lot of teachers felt I was pretty good at it for my age.
However…I ended up deciding that I needed to find something else to do with my life in order to have stuff to write ABOUT.
In high school, I decided I wanted to work in health care and spent the next few years working on making my way into med school. I’m currently a year away from graduating and becoming a doctor.
Haven’t written anything for pleasure in years. Maybe I’ll start writing again when I retire.
I’m the alternate universe version of Audrey Levins that suddenly located some discipline in a forgotten corner a few months ago. I’ve known I wanted to write for a living since, gee, age five or something ridiculous like that. It’s still my dream, and I’m working on it. I can’t recall a single moment when whatever I was doing at that moment wasn’t something I was doing until I could make it as a writer.
I never had a specific ambition as a kid. I loved acting and singing more than anything, but I knew I didn’t have the guts to do it professionally, and in high school I listened to the teacher who said to our class, “If you can possibly imagine being happy without acting, then don’t do it. There’s a 98% unemployment rate among actors, people! Only go in to acting if you’d be hopelessly miserable otherwise.” Since I couldn’t honestly say I’d be miserable otherwise, I didn’t become an actor.
It wasn’t until I was 31 or 32 that I felt like I found my niche - and I haven’t achieved that yet. But I do feel more strongly than any other passing whim that nursing is what I should and could do for the rest of my life. But it might be another whim like herbalism was, and then massage therapy. At least it will be a higher paying more flexible job field whim!
My son, on the other hand, announced when he was 7 that he wants to “design and build homes for the homeless, using recycled materials to help the environment.” He hasn’t wavered from a plan to become an architect of some sort, and he’s now 15.
I think some of us are wired for commitment and lucky enough to learn about the “right job” for us when we’re young, and some of us aren’t. Some of us may not have a true calling, but can get enthusiastic about whatever we’re doing (this might be me), and some people just work the grind for the paycheck their whole lives and experience their true fulfillment outside of work.
I’m fairly pissed off at all the women’s magazines of the '90s that convinced me that if I just found a way to get paid for what I love, I’d be a success on the level of Oprah and Mrs. Fields. I spent way too many years searching for what I could “love” instead of getting trained and paid for what I could be good at.
Hi there dopers, long time lurker first time poster here.
Just wanted to say, since I can remember (about 5 is the earliest event I can accurately recount) that I wanted to be a mech designer. Now at 26 years old I’ve been an electro-mechanical designer for 8 years.
That’s right folks, a high school dropout is designing your U.S. military and CIA communications satellites.
I was in 10th grade and volunteering in the library. We had a little TV studio, and one day, the librarian sent me back there to help out.
I spent the rest of the day in a euphoric daze. I signed up for the TV production classes the high school offered, majored in it in college, and I’ve worked in broadcasting ever since.
SCSimmons, one weekend we challenged my kids to an Iron Chef competition. We thought it would be a simple meal, but they were yanking cookbooks off the shelves right and left, planning appetizers, main dishes and sides and desserts, and trash talking each other.
We gave them a budget and they shopped for their ingredients at the grocery store. They had a blast and the meals were pretty good, too!
, and still wondering if the career I’ve ended up with is what I want to do with my life. I had brief flirtations with different ideas when I was a kid, in high school, in college, and after–tried something for a while, then drifted away …
(He ordered a dish along those lines at Applebee’s, and decided he had to figure out how to make it himself. :eek: )
