What do you want to do when you grow up?

What Do You Want To Do 
When You Grow Up?

Hands up if you know the answer!

What do you want to do when you grow up? I mean, what do you REALLY want to do? What does your little beastie inside dream about? Is it gardening all day long, or travelling the world? Writing a book? Staying at home with the kids and baking cakes? Being a food journalist paid to try out swish restaurants? An astronaut? 

So many options. No Options. Somewhere in between? 

I have read that the children of today are being trained for jobs that do not yet exist. I have read that 'young people' today will have more jobs in their lifetime and career changes than baby boomers ever had... or my generation.

It's a bit bamboozling. Especially when just the type of jobs there are today can seem overwhelming.

If someone had told me 10 years ago what I would be doing what I do today to earn a crust, I would have thought they were mental. 

For a start, back then I could only just use a microwave, let alone a keyboard on a computer.  Was there even the internet? Probably, but I was knee deep in breeding, nappies, breastmilk and sleepless nights, studying a degree by distance education, and barely functioning probably. No such thing as social media or e-commerce. Not to me in my world. Even if there was, I would not have noticed.

cat wrangler? vet? maybe not

And even then, with one degree under my belt, and another half way there, I entertained the idea of doing horticulture or landscape design. Just another thing that tickled my fancy. Along with floristry, make-up artist and art therapist. 

Perhaps not so unexpected, they are all jobs with a bit of creativity involved. But truly weirdly, strangely and bizarrely, at one point I actually considered joining the army! I cannot quite believe it myself. I must have been insane. It would NEVER have worked for me. But I had finished Uni, was a bit adrift, not sure what to do with myself. I thought maybe I would get skinny and fit and become hard core, and find my inner Sigourney Weaver. I went into the recruitment centre, got the forms, took them home. But at nights I started having dreams of being locked in small rooms and little boxes, and woke up in sweats. Common sense got the better of me and I avoided a big mistake.

So I never added that one to the list of JOBS I HAVE DONE...

Why Mary? just for fun I used to wear it. Crazy me.Lol.

Pizza delivery, car auction wench (don't ask), fluffy koala for the Wilderness Society, beach kiosk customer relations (!), short order cook, waitress, kitchen-hand, newspaper photographer, balloon bouquet maker, sales girl and delivery, clothes shop retail assistant, Body Shop girl, supermarket shelf stacker, teacher assistant... all while at school and Uni or travelling the world.

Yes, I used to dress like these koala dudes

I met Anita Roddick when I worked at The Body Shop in England

(she pinched my bottom!)

All these jobs served a purpose, for a short time. Life is going to throw shit at us. Good things, bad things, surprising things. Do we adapt, do U-turns, give up? Go with the flow, accept it all graciously? Adjust accordingly? Fight the changes, try to alter them?

I am not sure of course. And though how we earn money is just one aspect of life, from my experience, it really does seem to define us, even when we don't want it too. One of the first things people ask when they meet you is to invariably ask "So what do you do?" It is hard to separate you from your job. How many times have we been told that someones job is sucking the souls and the joy from them? I know it once happened to me - well not the profession, but the workplace itself.  

So I guess what we do to earn money, our career, is important when we view ourselves. A prism, a frame of how we see ourselves in the world.

Some of my loveliest friends, people who are smart and funny and brilliant, are middle aged and still don't know what they want to do with their lives, are restless and unsettled. What they want to be when they grow up!? We talk about it, whinge, worry, fret, get hopeful, get anxious, are filled with the joy of hope and excitement of new things, and tremble at the thought of failure and the embarrassment and fiscal cost of it if we did fail. They struggle and feel bad because they are unsure. And I do not know the answer. I just see how brilliant they are. I just have faith they can achieve whatever they want, and will try to support them to get there anyway I can. Because they have certainly supported me in my own sinuous, ongoing journey.

STOP! I am feeling a little overwhelmed...

As a teenager, and in my early twenties, I  thought that by now I would well and truly be firmly established and settled. A real grown up. Funny how things work out. So,  I guess, I really need to think... what do I want to be when I grow up?

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