I found myself involved in a conversation with a teenager the other day (I’m not even really sure how it happened) about work and jobs and life and the future and the chatter eventually came around to what steps said ‘young’ should be taking to secure his future as a good and productive citizen of the universe-world. Then, someone asked me my opinion on the matter. Cue that sound that always plays in the movies, you know the one – where the record gets stopped abruptly with that awful scratching noise and all the kids at the party pause, mid-keg-stand.
Scriiiiitch!
Um, dude: you are totally asking the wrong person.
People always ask me how I got into IT and working with computer junk. The simple answer is, I have no idea. The more complex answer is: it just kind of happened. I never set out to work in the magical world of the web. I didn’t even have my own computer till I was 20 and only recently discovered that they are not powered by a combination of hopes, wishes and witchcraft. And while I have found that I do have an affinity for the old PC and all its workin’s when I put my mind to it (or at least moreso than the average jerk), I’m no expert. I may be able to wrangle around the InDesign and assorted other Adobe package wonders, I can muddle through building a basic website (but that shit’s going to have bugs, sorry) and sure I can complete those million other tiny job-specific tasks that I’ve trained myself to do over the past five years of doing my job – but I’m really just kind of winging it.
See, winging it? Wings? Plus there’s an owl up there too? I guess I’m going with some kind of bird theme here, but it’s not really working.
(Image by jr04 on Flickr)
That’s because, despite being 30 years old and having all manner of adult accoutrements (such as a car, a savings account and simply enormous breasts) I’m not really a proper grown up and I actually have no idea of what I want to do with my life.
Okay, that isn’t true. I do know what I want to do with my life and it involves writing science fiction stories, reading plenty of books, blogging, living by the ocean, doing lots of Yoga and generally being awesome, preferably with a bunch of dogs and cats. And maybe a goat. I just don’t know if I can ever make a living doing only those things. Probably not. Maybe, if I’m lucky and I work hard and become extremely awesome at writing.
I like to think this parrot has the same aspirations as I do. Keep at it, buddy!
(Image via ABC)
As for the whole notion of having a career doing some kind of job? No idea. I work with computers and websites now because it seems like a cool idea and I don’t mind it, but I’ve never had that whole deep passion when thinking of a career. (Well, except the writing thing.) I’ve got friends who are super passionate about things, and thus made it their jobs. Like, they are mad keen for language and thus became speech pathologists and ESL teachers. I know folks who love kids so they became childcare workers or teachers. I’ve got some friends who love punching holes in people’s skin and filling them with shiny jewels, and so they became body piercers. Or those kids who super dig on making shit, and thus became…like, folks who make shit. You know, houses and furniture and boats and bridges and stuff.
This goose always dreamed of being a dog groomer…Actually, I’m not quite sure of what’s going on here… (Image via strangenature)
Me, I’m passionate about books. So, following the above logic, I should really make books. But I’ve always had this whole things of being too bloody practical. At uni, my classmates would talk about being writers in the future, whereas I was always too pragmatic for ‘dreams’ such as that. I thought about paying the bills first and my aspirations second… and I think it was to my detriment. ‘Cause while the bills do need to get paid, there’s also room to aspire for more and if the thing you really want to do is something you are halfway decent at and love and that comes naturally, maybe it isn’t such a long shot.
Hopefully I’ll graduate from desk-jockey to…a different kind of desk jockey one day. Maybe, if I work hard enough and have enough luck and persistence and all that, I’ll get to do what I love when I grow up.
Do you even know what you want to be when you grow up? If so, did you reach as advanced an age as I before you figured it out? Let me know all about it!
great post. i think for any normal humanoid, this type of stuff evolves, as we know ourselves better and better. and it seems you like what you do or at least can tolerate it, so maybe that’s not pushing you to ‘look’ all that much further. regardless, everyone finds their ‘joy thing’ in time. sm
I totally agree that we do evolve in our tastes and desires as time goes on. After all, if we didn’t I’d still be writing depressing emo-fic instead of rollicking space adventures. Hopefully I can find some more balance between my ‘job’ and my ‘passions’.
Thanks for stopping by and commenting!
my pleasure. i wrote a piece of a similar sentiment called love and jobs…
I went through a vast number of ‘things I wanted to be’ when I was younger – geez I sound old now! hahah. In fact being a writer cropped up on that list a number of times, yet a struggling author needs to eat right!? So I went into the food industry and spent six grueling years of my life, of which I still have nightmares, working in various kitchens and cooking various and often suspect foodstuffs for the great hairy unwashed. At the end of the six years all I knew was that I DID NOT want to keep cooking stuff.
I scratched that off the list… not that it EVER appeared on the list really.
I then tried my hand at admin work, I became someone’s EA. Yeah – they were in for a world of hurt, I am pretty crazy in terms of perfectionism when it comes to some things… that seemed to work well for a little while, but I managed to get out of that and landed a job in IT. Crazy I know… us struggling writers just falling into the IT industry.
Now, I too am like you Miss Molly, I am plodding along in the IT space, trying to write the story that is bashing about inside my brain. I have not worked it out yet, but if someone points out their solution to this quandry, please pass it this way too
We could be the same person, except also not. I was queen barista (or as so many of my customers referred to me: ‘That bitchy chick who makes the coffee’) and worked in cafes and kitchens for many years, getting dirty and covered in food.
I actually still love making coffee, but merged into IT for the slightly larger computer bucks.
Hopefully when that unknown genius works out how to better wrangle the work/passion balance, they will clue us in on the magical secret.
I hate to sound trite, but I’m kind of living my dream now. I do accounting work from home, so I’m able to be around for my family. And I’ve been writing my ass for the last year.
For most of my life, I’ve done every miserable job under the sun to survive and it turns out, it was all fodder for this moment in time. It’s hard to take the long view when you’re waitressing at a truck stop or doing a security guard shift at 3am, but now I’ve got all this awesome material. You just never know what is going to turn out to be gold.
I’m with you on the tech stuff. I thought I might make money designing websites and administering networks, but it’s just not my thing, even if I am capable of doing it.
I’m 45, so I have definitely taken the long way around to figure stuff out and 10 years from now, it might be completely different.
I don’t think it sounds trite at all, I think it sounds awesome…
I too think that my time served in miserable employment has given me the fuel to write but also to know what I want, after having spent so long doing what I don’t want. It taught me humility and perseverance (as well as how to glower with the best of them.)
I got lucky…I’m doing what I love…even though I wasn’t sure initially if I was cut out for it. However, when I had my first day of placement {in my 2nd semester of Masters} I knew I was doing the right thing. Thankfully! Because it would have taken a lot of explaining to my parents why 4 and a half years of study later, I wasn’t cut out for becoming a psych and could they please pay another loan for me to do something else!
While it doesn’t pay massive amounts of money, I still have a roof over my head, a car to get me around and a life! 
I must admit, I still love to write though and I think the blog is my outlet for that along with other creative writing. I had wanted to become a journalist more than a decade ago and I’m kinda glad I changed my mind!