When I was a kid, I wanted to be a marine biologist. Somewhere along the way, that idea got trashed, and I still have days where I’d love to be doing it.
However! Being a horse trainer for the rest of my days would be nice too. You don’t make money but it’s so fulfilling when you train a youngster up right.
I would love to be a Forest Ranger or Naturalist and spend my days outdoors in the woods. I’m 50 years old and kind of out of shape, and I can’t afford the time or money to go back to college. So instead I spend a lot of weekends going on day hikes and I volunteer to do trail maintenance.
I also wouldn’t mind making pottery for a living, but I’d have to price anything I made outrageously high and I doubt anyone would pay anything for the stuff I make. I take the occasional pottery class at the Adult School.
I would go to a book store like Lurkmeister mentioned if there was one in my town, but there isn’t and it’s easier to go to Amazon.com.
Aaaaahhhh, to be an etymologist! Noting to do with my days other than sit and study the origin of words. Where they come from. Why do they do that? Just to sit and ponder wonderful, marvelous words all day long!
Someday, I’ll get to do it, too. My middle daughter fully intends to rule the world one day. When she does, she’s promised to make me her Minister of Good Words.
My first law would be that people really must find at least two occasions daily to work the word “serendipity” into their conversations. 
I don’t know yet.
I’d strongly prefer to not have to hit a lick at a snake for the rest of my days.
That or command a Battlestar/Other heavily armed spaceship.
Bookman’s Alley is still going strong, I love wandering through the meandering rooms and finding off the wall old books. It’s the Ur- Bookstore imho.
I would love to be working in programming or application development. I built a half-baked application in Access for our small business and I can spend endless (and largely happy) hours just fiddling with SQL and VB.
Researcher.
I love writing, and I’m good at it, but even more than the writing I love the research, digging into things, spending my days poring over old books and papers and things.
Anybody need a research assistant?
I bet you want to get paid, don’t you? 
Well, yeah, but I’m worth it!
I think being a park ranger at Yosemite would be pretty cool.
Is that when you staple them to the walls and call them art?
I’m happy to know that. I could have sworn I’d heard that it had closed. Maybe next time I’m in Chicago I’ll drop in.
I’d love to run a hobby gaming store with plenty of open table space for frequent Magic: the Gathering tournaments and open board game nights. It’s a good way to go broke, though.
Honestly, I still love the actual work that I do (computer programming), it’s just the whole corporate atmosphere and office politics that drain my soul away.
For a few glorious years I was a Google Answers Researcher. I’d have been happy to continue doing this for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, Google canceled the project.
Hosting a children’s television show would be bliss. I really need to go and finish the pilot script for The Laboratory of Professor Von Fun.
Oh Mrs.P would have a conniption fit if I stapled our cats to the wall. It wouldn’t be pretty…
Professional croquet/poker player. Alas, the former is impossible, and the latter requires far more skill and capital than I have at the moment.
Yeah, but just think what a great LOLCAT it would make:
iz on ur wallz, gardin’ ur shrwinn willyamz.
I’m not sure what the job title was, but I remember seeing a documentary about these guys in Morocco who lived up in the mountains and drank tea, smoked hashish and dispensed wisdom. I think they might have been priests of some sort. As long as they don’t have to be celibate, I think that would be a dream job. Either that or driving around in a truck checking on things or being a Penthouse photographer.
