Published on 12, July, 2020
Growing up we all have that one job that we want most and sometimes we think of something new when we're bit older. My dream job growing up and still now is to be a nurse. I've always found this so interesting and I'd love to do it. It's obviously not going to happen but it's good to dream.
Ah, I'm not sure whether I ever had any thoughts of that "one job". In fact I felt confused and afraid of the adult world, and especially of work, because it seemed to be another of those things that other people seemed to have special knowledge of, and I felt as though I stood outside all of this. Other kids would say, "I want to be a vet" or "I'm going to be an architect" but I'd wonder how they knew. I don't know whether they really did. And, for example, it later turned out that the girl who wanted to be a vet had simply enjoyed watching "All Creatures Great and Small" but never managed to excel in the subjects needed for training in that field.
Looking back, my anxieties grew the older I got because, although education purported to be a preparation, I just didn't see how the richness of a wide and varied curriculum with clear academic targets could prepare us for just doing one job all day long, how I'd actually get the job, how I'd get there and how I'd get along with other employees. Moreover, I had little knowledge of how those jobs might look, and which of my strengths would match up. I was good at art and English - but with the latter it was literature, poetry and creative writing rather than essays, letters and reports, and with the former I couldn't see a way of making a living at it. I ended up just dong the conventional thing and, rather than seeking a job a really wanted, taking what I could get. So I spent a long long time working in finance, with increasing levels of dissatisfaction and alienation, before eventually retraining as a counsellor and bringing elements of art and writing into my therapeutic approach. I don't think counselling was mentioned as an option at school, nor did I know of any counsellors until my own life was going very wrong and I needed help. My dream job though? Surrealist artist. I might incorporate some of this into my retirement. :)
Thanks for sharing that in such a beautifully written way. Much of that resonates very strongly with me. That feeling of 'how do they know?', 'when will all this become clearer?', 'what happens if I don't get the calling to a specific career?' was always in me right through secondary school, and even into university - I did a degree un English and definitely didn't want to teach!
I think I may have ended up in libraries for one simple reason: it was the most calming and appealing environment I remembered being in as a child. And after a disastrous attempt to do an IT qualification at around the time of the dotcom bubble taking off (1999/2000) and realising I hated it and found programming impossible to get to grips with (thank god, in hindsight), and working in a bookshop for some time afterwards while I worked out what to do, I just realised that I should seek out the environment that I could make most sense of - one that wasn't about having to know one specialism so much as getting to facilitate connecting other people to materials related to theirs. Looking back, the path there looked straighter than the crazy paving drifting it felt like at the time. There was a strong throughline of finding my way into book-centred environments (in retail to start with), and the maintaining of ordered stock, cataloguing, ordering, record checking etc.
I also realised that I'm someone who needs to work in a reactive role, with clearly defined parameters and procedures. Apart from the odd suggestion of a small refinement here and there, I'm not one of life's innovators or blue-skies thinkers, people/budget managers, or even teaching-planners. Those higher grade responsibilities that exist too within my own profession still look to me like a strange alchemy that other adult minds can somehow instinctively get to grips with and that I know would burn me out fast if I ever got myself into the unwelcome challenge of such a post. And yet a while ago I got into a real state (a breakdown really) about status anxiety - making all sorts of detailed percentage calculations about what colleagues had done, how quickly they'd moved to other positions etc.While not unique, I was in a minority of a staedy few staying in one post, favouring one specific remit long-term. And now I realise that I'm literally not wired to be like the majority anyway, which helps a lot. I'm lucky to have a gig that fits me perfectly, and I'd be mad to give it up just to be seen to do the most ultra-orthodox things and end up miserable and on course for total overwhelm.
I can only be me. Anyway, it was very consoling to read your words JennyButterfly, good to know that I wasn't the only one at a total loss as to the 'I'm going to be...' secret everyone else seemed to be in on.
Whilst I wouldn't want to "undo" myself, there are some traumas that have shaped me in less than admirable ways. If I felt that I'd in some way grown or developed more authentically as a person because of them, I might see it differently. Also if I felt I could significantly influence the present in the light of new knowledge and awareness I'd gained.
Now there have been some gains, that's true, and I'm very pleased of those and their effects, which no doubt radiate out and affect those I love. But the ongoing effects of intergenerational trauma and repeating patterns in my family are off the scale. And knowledge of the nature of our neurodivergence at an earlier stage could have spared us a lot of pain and helped us to avoid our current situation.
I basically played the 10/10 game for far too long and it kept me skimming the surface and unable to see the disastrous issues that were building up for my sons. And so, whilst being a 10/10 mother, things were driven to crisis point, more than once, with services chiming in too with a similar mindset. I wonder now whether I was modelling an extreme form of masking to my sons, which they then adopted , until they no longer could.
If I'd felt free to be an autistic artist, perhaps they'd have felt safe enough and able to be themselves too.
Jenny Butterfly said:I wish I could talk to my former self and tell her the "secrets" I now know.
In order to re-do the past?
But wouldn't it undo you, you are now, as well?
After similar experiences (10/10 especially) in different scenaries I would rather think:
I am me, like me-now, me-that I don't despise, with my integrity still intact, because of all those experiences. So, I wouldn't want to change them or call them failures, they helped me build understaning of me.
Yes, mine has been a very meandering path too. And I did feel drawn to librarianship on various occasions, but was reluctant to retrain because I had all of these instilled beliefs about where I should be by a particular age and, like yourself, comparing it to others. Again, I think much of this came from the kind of education I had - the need to get 10/10 all the time was often in there, in one way or another. I just couldn't figure out how to do it in a work environment. It was as if the tables had turned, there was no certainty any more and all of this additional stuff about being a "dynamic self starter with strong leadership qualities and the need to be challenged" crept in. I rapidly burnt out trying to get 10/10 in those areas. Being the systems accountant in a large organisation was a particular low point. Upon reflection, I should have just stuck with being me, gone much further with art and English, and maybe incorporated a bit of gardening too. I would have had to give up on getting 10/10 though and, to this day, that's still in me. I wonder why, when I know that that adult version of this game actually destroys me. I wish I could talk to my former self and tell her the "secrets" I now know. But at least we know now. I say that because I really think that some people never do.