I thought I was going to write about and show postcards and doodles today, but things got in the way of making them, not me, things! I swear! So instead here’s a little something to give you at least a chuckle.
In some earlier posts we’ve discussed the topic of having a vocation and several readers agreed that perhaps you don’t need one. When you read advice on these things around the web, one suggestion is to ask: “What did you enjoy as a child and is that what you should be doing as an adult?”
So I thought it would be fun to dump the same question here, hoping that you’ll all play along with me. Do you agree with this theory or not, are you doing what you loved as a kid or at least something that makes you feel the same way, do you wish you had the guts to, and if, why don’t you?
I’ll start: As a kid I loved drawing, books, building things and making up stories, and, well horses. I had my debut as a photographer when I was 4! (unfortunately not a regular occurrence, film was expensive I guess). There was even a certain fascination with yarn winders and knitting machines… I also enjoyed doing these things on my own, I wasn’t desperate to have friends around all the time or even my family. Geesh, what do you mean “no surprise”?!
So why didn’t I end up working with the things I liked? Well, I used to have a million bad excuses. How I didn’t enjoy math, didn’t want to move, blablabla.
- There have been several related carreer choices on the table in my teens and 20’s, such as veterinarian, archaeologist, architect, psychologist, photographer, but I could never commit enough to just one when thinking of the huge debt I’d have on the other side of uni. You know, in case I picked the wrong one? At that age you think everything you choose is forever….
- I had bought into the theory that you can’t make a living from art. And for some reason, during high school all my stories disappeared. I was too timid to find an apprenticeship in photography because everybody kept telling me how hard it was.
- Nobody had mentioned to me you need to work hard to accomplish things. (actually perhaps somebody did and I didn’t believe them?) Homework was something I did with a flick of my
magic wandpencil and things I couldn’t do I just didn’t out of embarrassment to be seen failing. Again, the ignorance of youth! Life is wasted on the young. - Even then my batteries weren’t good enough to be able to work and study at the same time, for instance I battled a chronic headache from 18-25 years of age. Hence the commitment issue and fear of choosing. But really, I think I was just lazy. I could have insisted somebody investigated the headaches for instance, but I don’t think that ever occurred to me. (eventually I did find the cause, rather by coincidence)
So I’ve been away from all of these interests for longer periods as an adult, doing various odd jobs, but they keep circling round. By now I’ve given up trying to adapt to society and just be me, which is great. I’m not rich but I do have a roof over my head and I’m definitely not undernourished either. 😉
Let’s see a bit of interaction!
It’s funny how you begin to remember more things when you turn to them like this. Some of my “dream jobs” elude me right now, although I know there were more, but I suddenly remember how sometimes I went along to pick up my mum from the office (Normally I was the last one to be picked up after the day).
And if I begged real hard I was allowed to use the typewriter! It was long before I could write but I loved operating it and seeing all the letters appear. Later we had a small typewriter at home and I used it to write little stories and paste them into notebooks with drawings.
