What do you want to do or be when you grow up?

I've never had an ambition, or a goal/s in life, at 63 I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up. I don't know if it's because I was never encouraged to do anything when I was a child, although I was often discouraged. If like most little girls I said I wantd to be a nurse, I was told that I wouldn't really want to that as it would involve carrying used bed pans around. A wish to be a hairdresser was met with disgust.

We had no careers advice at school, or at least not until we'd made our exam choices and it was to late to change anything. Some of the teachers said there was no point in educating us as we'd only go off and get married and have babies.

After leaving school, I was asked what I wanted to do and could never answer, I simply didn't know, I remember being told to search through a filing cabinet of folders about possible careers and found nothing, I was just overwhelmed. I think it also didn't help that a "career" was a fairly new thing, for people of my class, we's always had "jobs", which was a very different thing.

How did you find the thing you wanted to do, or do you still not know?

Do you do the job you trained for? 

Parents
  • After leaving school, I was asked what I wanted to do and could never answer, I simply didn't know,

    This was me and still is me.
    I'm 21 soon and I have no idea what I want to do, or even where I want my life to go. Growing up I loved the idea of working with horses looking after them, or teaching young children. But my anxiety and mental health soon brought with it the realisation that I'll likely never reach those things.

    So far I've worked part time in a library and even that was ultimately a disaster. I think a lot about what I'd like to do but most of it is dismissed instantly because I know mentally I'm not capable.

    At one point I was studying and attending university but I crashed and burned, the pressures and environment were too much. I currently don't work but if I can change things one day I would still love to work with little children, as a primary school teacher, or in a pre-school.

Reply
  • After leaving school, I was asked what I wanted to do and could never answer, I simply didn't know,

    This was me and still is me.
    I'm 21 soon and I have no idea what I want to do, or even where I want my life to go. Growing up I loved the idea of working with horses looking after them, or teaching young children. But my anxiety and mental health soon brought with it the realisation that I'll likely never reach those things.

    So far I've worked part time in a library and even that was ultimately a disaster. I think a lot about what I'd like to do but most of it is dismissed instantly because I know mentally I'm not capable.

    At one point I was studying and attending university but I crashed and burned, the pressures and environment were too much. I currently don't work but if I can change things one day I would still love to work with little children, as a primary school teacher, or in a pre-school.

Children
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