I want to be writing/be a writer. But I’m no good at it.
I can string words together if there’s an immediate purpose for it (an email, a message board post) but I have a hopelessly short attention span. I can’t muster the type of attitude that must be needed to write.
You need to spend hours and hours doing it, and probably not get immediate feedback (self satisfaction upon completing something, or even seeing someone else appreciate it shortly after you’ve done it) for a very long time if at all. I am shamelessly vain in that I love to write something short and which fulfills it’s purpose within say ten minutes of it being written.
For me, a kind of perfect life would be - wake up, immediately start writing. Eventually I would be too hungry and I’d rush something to eat. Write some more. Midday and eventually I’m fed up feeling uncempt so I go and wash/dress/shave. Write some more. Watch TV (thinking about writing) Go to bed, Imagining my story (maybe get up again to edit the day’s work) eventually fall asleep at the keyboard or on top of my covers.
Anyway… what’s your think that you wish you were doing, and why aren’t you doing it?
edit: I’ve decided not to fix that typo. ‘What’s your think’ is a neat accident.
I love writing, editing, and proofreading. If I could find a job in that field, I would quit the college English teaching job which I have held for 17.5 years —I’m tired of it. Well, that’s not the whole story…I cannot obtain FT work in this field, and slumming it as a paycheck-to-paycheck PT just isn’t satisfying or stable.
I’m also seriously considering a career change to paralegal work or even health occupations. Naturally, that would involve going back to school.
I always wanted to be a costume designer. I studied historical and ethnic costumes voraciously, taught myself the basics of pattern-drafting and draping, sketched out designs constantly.
Then I started researching some more and found out what I was about to get into…
You see, I’m rather fond of financial stability, and very few designers ever find the kind of work where you get a steady bi-weekly paycheque (just like anyone else in film/theatre/TV), and rarer still are steady positions where you get to actually design in the true sense of the word. Most people never go further than cutting, sewing and fitting someone else’s creations, or working one step up from a stylist because the clothes are purchased at the mall rather than designed from scratch.
I ran into a friend some time ago who works for a movie theatre. He’d seen my name on a list for an industry pre-screening, and asked if I had followed my dreams (obviously, no… I was on the list because my other half was doing movie FX at the time). It stung a little to admit that I’d gone in a completely different direction, and hadn’t touched a sewing machine in years.
I’ve finally set up a little sewing nook in the new house, though, and have every intention of picking up where I left off - though I’ll stick to making stuff for myself.
I am close to doing what I want to be doing. I index books. However, the books I am indexing are instructional computer books, covering the same product suite over and over again as it gets updated for a new release every year or two. I could index these things in my sleep at this point. What I would like to do is to index… something else. Something that would actually be challenging, interesting, and different.
The reason I’m not is because with Whatsit the Youngest only 10 months old and still home full-time, I don’t have the extra resources to do the professional training I want to do, and send out the freelance queries I’d have to send out. However, as soon as he starts preschool at age 18 months, I have an entire plan in place for how I am going to effect these changes.
In the meantime I’m just going to keep chugging away on these stupid computer books.
Because I am a creature of comfort which doesn’t make me the kind of person who could persue acting as a profession. I love it and I think it would make me truly happy, but I can’t get past the whole living like you are damn near homeless and working strange shifts as a waitress in an all night diner to keep from starving to death part of becoming a professional actress.
I’ve always wanted to do something “crafty” like dressmaking, particularly along the lines of theatrical costume-making but I’m crap at it. In fact I can just about cut a pattern if I’ve got my best dressmaker friend round to help me. I can’t sew straight, even with a machine, and I get very easily frustrated.
We have a plan to go to the Venice carnival next year and make our own outfits. That gives me 11 months to stress and 30 days of frantic sewing, swearing and crying.
I think I’d be good at teaching astronomy at the college level.
Problem is, I’m not all that at research. Being just an instructor pays shit, has terrible hours, and no benefits or job security. And I don’t know how to live on a low income, and have absolutely no desire to learn.
Even if I were better at original research, there’s another problem- I’m married to another astronomer. Getting two professorships with tenure in the same city in that case is hard. Getting-tenure-at-Harvard hard. Stephen Hawking could do it, but not that many other people could. And I’m also not willing to have a commuter marriage where we don’t live in the same city and just get together on weekends or something like that.
Because when I was 17, the Spanish military didn’t accept women. Plus they’re kind of picky about pilots and eyesight…
On a more-realistic plane, my plan for a “post-consultancy career” still involves becoming a translator. I’m working on putting away enough of a squirrel’s nest to live on while I get the required degree (which didn’t exist when I was in college) and some time beyond.
I’d love to be a horse trainer. It’s an old cliche but a good one when I think about this—“To make a small fortune in the horse business, start with a large one.”
Because I still don’t know what I want to be if I grow up.
I stumbled into computer repair accidentally and I’m still not sure how I got into software testing. I have a degree in Environmental Science (started as HazMat, but the field evolved in the 13 years it took me to finish), so I guess it’s possible I want to do that. Kind of hard to start a whole new career at 4… for… 39 with a family, mortgage, and good paying job that I don’t dislike. So here I am.
As a teenager I wanted to be a mercenary - if only Dubya and Blackwater were around back in those days.
I compromised on being near what I enjoy. I’m good at all the financial and logistics stuff, but love writing, theater, history, music, etc. I settled for working the business end of non-profit arts and education, and am now making enough to allow my husband to try out being a full-time musician, so I can get satisfaction knowing that the time I spend crunching spreadsheets and sitting in board meetings is helping to produce the stuff I love.
I guess because if there’s something other than laying around surfing the web and reading trash that I’m suited for and enjoy doing, I haven’t found it yet. Nor have I found anyone to pay me generously for these valuable services.
I think by the time I figure out what I want to do for a living it’ll be time to retire.
I would rather be working as an attorney for the EPA. My agency is nice, and I lucked out in that I get to do public/private work and got an excellent promotion package when I signed on, but I’d rather have received the EPA fellowship.
Because I don’t have enough education, yet. I want to be a professor, I need a PhD. That’s about the only thing that gets me to the bus stop at 6:30 every morning, for yet another 10+ hour day.
Okay, I don’t mind grad school, but this week’s sucked. Chemicals, do what you are told!
I really wanted to be an artist. Got up quite a collection of hopeful work in many media, got booths at art fairs, passed out postcards to dealers, etc.
And in the end could never break even, much less make money.
So true. I do what I must to pay the bills and I put on a smile while I do it because I’m a professional and that’s what professionals do. But I spend my free time networking and interviewing for a better job in a field that is less soul-sucking.
Aviation designer - except I am useless at maths and engineering, and haven’t earned enough to build a corporation to do it for me. (Or to put a factory up somewhere to build test planes from expired patents without the restrictions the UK has on where you can fly the things.)
On my backup plan of CTO, I need either ten years more experience to be taken seriously; or if I pass the remaining qualifications and an interview, about two weeks. Scary thought.
