Now I am less than 3 months away from hitting my milestone 30th birthday I thought it would be as good a time as any to ask the very important question: What do I want to do when I grow up?
Admittedly, aged 29, 10 months and 20-something days is perhaps a little late to be considering this, but having tried to answer that very question as a bright-eyed, bad-haired child and coming up with nothing, I reckon it's worth another stab with the benefit of some degree of life experience.
As a child my answers to any question about my future vocation would usually either be Footballer (ambitious, but ultimately unattainable) or something to do with animals; I remember making an agreement with an arty kid to have a veterinary surgery where I'd do the healing why he drew pictures to sell to the pet owners. Which is a sound business model assuming pet owners want a pencil drawing of their cat being given the snip or their dog being put to death by lethal injection. And who wouldn't want that?
So, clearly the football thing didn't work out for me or you'd be reading this on an ostentatious chrome-clad blog littered with gold-digging glamour models, and there was no chance of me becoming a vet either once I realised you needed some aptitude for the sciences. So, not knowing what I wanted to do, I did nothing, I didn't get a degree or pursue any particular career, I just finished school and waited to see what turned up.
My working life story isn't too interesting so I'll just go over the highlights. I loaded lorries for Dixons when they still had shops to stock, I scanned/post-produced photographs for a sports picture agency, I did roughly the same for a group of local papers, and now I'm doing a load of varied web/editorial things in the TV industry. Nothing there to set the world alight, and nothing that really amounts to a career path. Not that i'm complaining per se, just saying that my plan to not have a plan turned out how most unplanned plans do... sketchy.
I've done alright for myself though, I've taught myself loads of skills along the way and have got loads of good experience, but all things i've done have been pretty niche and haven't really taken me anywhere nearer to finding out what I actually want to do. I'm secretly hoping that writing about it here will help me decide.
A large part of my problem is that i'm lazy, actually that's not fair, i'm not lazy, when i'm asked to do something I will always do it, and go above and beyond what's expected of me in order to do the best job possible. However, if no one asks anything of me I can very easily just sit on my arse and while away the hours in front of the TV, PlayStation (while all my personal details are stole), or computer and end up with nothing productive at the end of it.
There are things I think interest me that I think I might like to get involved in as a career; sport (i'm relatively encyclopaedic with my depth of knowledge), writing (I enjoy bashing out the odd blog now and again and the writing aspects of my current job), and lately, having succumbed to the avalanche of home buying/building programmes on TV that my girlfriend s enjoys, I love the idea of designing buildings. The thing is though, all of those things are difficult to make a living out of; you either need qualifications, contacts, experience or money or a mixture of some if not all of them. And, crucially you need ambition and to not be a defeatist like me. Clearly.
So, what do I want to be when I grow up? I don't know.... lottery winner?
Admittedly, aged 29, 10 months and 20-something days is perhaps a little late to be considering this, but having tried to answer that very question as a bright-eyed, bad-haired child and coming up with nothing, I reckon it's worth another stab with the benefit of some degree of life experience.
As a child my answers to any question about my future vocation would usually either be Footballer (ambitious, but ultimately unattainable) or something to do with animals; I remember making an agreement with an arty kid to have a veterinary surgery where I'd do the healing why he drew pictures to sell to the pet owners. Which is a sound business model assuming pet owners want a pencil drawing of their cat being given the snip or their dog being put to death by lethal injection. And who wouldn't want that?
So, clearly the football thing didn't work out for me or you'd be reading this on an ostentatious chrome-clad blog littered with gold-digging glamour models, and there was no chance of me becoming a vet either once I realised you needed some aptitude for the sciences. So, not knowing what I wanted to do, I did nothing, I didn't get a degree or pursue any particular career, I just finished school and waited to see what turned up.
My working life story isn't too interesting so I'll just go over the highlights. I loaded lorries for Dixons when they still had shops to stock, I scanned/post-produced photographs for a sports picture agency, I did roughly the same for a group of local papers, and now I'm doing a load of varied web/editorial things in the TV industry. Nothing there to set the world alight, and nothing that really amounts to a career path. Not that i'm complaining per se, just saying that my plan to not have a plan turned out how most unplanned plans do... sketchy.
I've done alright for myself though, I've taught myself loads of skills along the way and have got loads of good experience, but all things i've done have been pretty niche and haven't really taken me anywhere nearer to finding out what I actually want to do. I'm secretly hoping that writing about it here will help me decide.
A large part of my problem is that i'm lazy, actually that's not fair, i'm not lazy, when i'm asked to do something I will always do it, and go above and beyond what's expected of me in order to do the best job possible. However, if no one asks anything of me I can very easily just sit on my arse and while away the hours in front of the TV, PlayStation (while all my personal details are stole), or computer and end up with nothing productive at the end of it.
There are things I think interest me that I think I might like to get involved in as a career; sport (i'm relatively encyclopaedic with my depth of knowledge), writing (I enjoy bashing out the odd blog now and again and the writing aspects of my current job), and lately, having succumbed to the avalanche of home buying/building programmes on TV that my girlfriend s enjoys, I love the idea of designing buildings. The thing is though, all of those things are difficult to make a living out of; you either need qualifications, contacts, experience or money or a mixture of some if not all of them. And, crucially you need ambition and to not be a defeatist like me. Clearly.
So, what do I want to be when I grow up? I don't know.... lottery winner?
