My Younger Selves

For the first time in my adult life I have complete freedom to do/be whatever I want. Up until this point I have always been employed/finishing school and there have always been goals associated with my employment (just until I finish school, just until the world sorts itself out, just until I get to buy an apartment etc).

Now? Complete and total freedom. I am extremely lucky to have a tres supportive boyfriend that agrees with me (and allows me to use d-baggy words like tres in my every day speech) that this time I need to hold out, to make sure that I find something that has the potential to turn into a career.

So I can actually do anything (well obviously not anything- I mean I can't go and become a doctor now can I?). Which is completely and totally overwhelming. Anything? Kind of a big area yes? Last night I was trying to narrow it down a little. How? By going back through the years and remembering what I used to want to be when I grew up.

When I was very young, like 8, I had a fascination with buttons. I loved buttons, like keyboards, elevators, anything that made a delightful sound when pressed. Clearly with such a love of buttons to push, my ideal career choice would be a bank teller. I used to spend hours in my room pretending I was a teller (no close friends, no)- I had an old computer that didn't do anything in my room, whose sole purpose was to aide me in my "I'm a bank teller" playtime. I wrote out bank slips (before I could handwrite so it was mainly just scribbling) too. I was awesome at it.

When I was about 11 or 12 I was completely in love with school. I couldn't wait to go to school in the morning, begged for homework starting when I was 9, went back to school shopping in July because I couldn't wait. I was also extremely fortunate to have awesome teachers (aside from the one in grade 5 ) and therefore decided that I wanted to become a teacher when I grew up. This was before I discovered my extreme frustration attached to trying to teach anyone anything that they didn't understand right away. And my dislike of other people's children (not all, not even most, but there are some). I have been told a lot (by people that clearly don't know me very well) that I would be an excellent teacher but I have long since decided that its not for me.

I remember doing a school project on becoming a journalist. I must have been 14. I can't remember if I actually wanted to be a journalist, or if I was just looking for something to do my project on though. To this day a good chunk of my family believes that this is my goal/what I should do.

There was a long stretch in time when I believed that Prince William would find me, fall in love with me and make me his princess, thereby negating my need for employment. I still sometimes hold onto that dream.

The plan at some point was to study English and History in University (I didn't- I did minor in English though) but I have no idea what it was that I planned to do with that, having already vetoed the whole teacher thing. Maybe the plan was that I would just be super knowledgeable about stuff and that would carry me through life somehow?

Looking back, my younger selves have been exactly no help. Why didn't I ever have any concrete career goals? Now I still have to figure this all out by myself. Stupid past selves.

What did you want to be when you grew up?