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
  • I have two degrees in music composition and I barely do that anymore. I taught it for ten years but then got burnt out, had my pay reduced, and became annoyed that students stopped caring around COVID time. It’s hard thinking what I want to do for the rest of my life. Helping people with disabilities is fine and all, but it’s not what I originally planned on doing…

  • It only matters if you think it matters.

    You don't have to do what you planned, unless it will nag at you and make you feel like you missed out or underachieved. I you don't mind then go with it.

    I never planned any of my jobs.

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