What did you want to be as a kid

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successful at life or something.

As a kid, I wanted to be a vet. Now I want to become a Pathologist Assistant.

I wanted to be an adult. It happened eventually but not as soon as I would have liked.

Normal.

mr. bassman.

A video games designer/tester. Then an author. Where I am now is not far off to my childhood aspirations.

a kindergarten teacher, then an oceanographer

In no particular order: a veterinarian, a doctor, a nun (grew up Catholic) and a farmer with 16 kids.

I’m currently a happily married legal secretary with one human step-kid and three fur-kids.

Not a kid.

The Black Night of The Black Lands

(Arthurian Romances)

Definitely!

I thought that life would be easier as a machine, but that I'd lose consciousness, and not enjoy it anyway.
When other boys wanted to be cowboys or firemen, my father had me trained to reply "I want to be an aeronautical engineer." However, he never trained himself to feel at ease with me going farther in school than himself. I still managed to use a lot of aerodynamic insight in my work.
I wanted to be a design engineer because so much of it was badly done, and I assumed that everybody else did too, since their work informed whole industries. I had admired a grandfather who had been a manufacturer, and kept trying to get things into production, either on my own or helping with other development.

My answer changed depending on the week. I was an indecisive kid.

Trying to recall them in chronological order would be a difficult task considering how often the answer changed. So here are the ambitions I remember in no particular order:

- Author

I loved to write stories and often had my face in a book. This is something I would do in and outside of school. I was often in a world of my own. Sometimes literally since I had a paracosm.

-Singer

I enjoyed singing and liked to obsess over certain bands and singers.

- Psychologist

I wanted to achieve a better understanding of how the human mind works. To understand why certain people in my life put on fake smiles even though they were clearly not OK, why people seemingly found me so confusing, and I wanted to make something positive out of a bad situation. To spin my life into a conclusive narrative. However, life doesn't always give you closure in the way you originally expect, and sometimes it doesn't give you it at all.

Other aspirations included: lawyer, vet, games tester, cat behaviourist, business entrepreneur with a successful website, a personal assistant, cartoonist, animator, dog trainer, art restoration, working in a hotel, careers adviser, food nutritionist, IT specialist and biologist.

I'm still an avid reader of fiction. Every so often I write poems and short stories in my spare time. As for singing, I'm a fan of musicals and enjoy singing along. I'm not pursuing psychology but it's still an interest. Learning about it can come in handy when I'm dealing with characters and how I present myself to others. I take part in character acting in improv comedy and occasionally scripted work. Whilst I follow a few YouTube channels that feature lawyers reacting to representations of lawyers in TV and film; it's only a minor interest.

As for cartoonist and animator; I actually learn some animation these days. I'm improving on my drawing ability but I still have a long way to go. At the moment I'm coding and designing a mobile game, so younger me who periodically wanted to test games would be happy with this development. I'm considering combining some of my poems or stories with my visual art work and potentially expanding into online comics.

Currently I'm not quite sure what exactly I want to specialise in. I often feel as though I am a master of none.

Last edited by Lost_dragon on 26 Feb 2020, 9:25 am, edited 1 time in total.

^^ Very often, versatility beats maximized skill. People need little bits of lots of chores, but none are very hard. Things learned one place sometimes turn out to be valuable insights in another. Even learning to play music has broad benefits in other tasks. Broad experience is also a wonderful security in changing times.

This is true. Especially in an over-saturated market such as digital design. My tutors often advise us to predominantly focus on one area, but to also develop in others since an employer might expect work that somewhat drifts outside of that skill set. For instance, someone might primarily focus on 2D immobile graphic design but knowing how to create 3D prototypes for a product and/or how to make motion graphics can come in handy. Especially if you have clients who change their minds or make additional requests that weren't a part of the original plan.

I had a client once who did this and the project had to be extended by a month. They got annoyed at me for this, but the kind of extra work they were asking for couldn't be done sooner. If they'd told me earlier then I wouldn't have had to go into overtime. Sometimes I have understanding clients who don't do this. That's always a nice change. I love it when clients know exactly what they want and don't make remarks such as "I could do this a lot quicker than you; I've never used any of those fancy programs before but I bet I could easily". That's nice, feel free to. If you think you can do better, why am I here? Especially if time isn't an issue since you're apparently a whizz at something you've never used before. Despite the fact I've seen your current work and it's awful. *Sigh* Unfortunately some people are terrible to work with. Sadly you can't say that and you have to be nice to them.

One of the good things about IT is that you can teach yourself, which is useful when your lectures keep striking and/or are bad at teaching. If you're willing to put the hours in then it's usually possible to get the hang of a variety of techniques. Of course, not everyone gets work in their area of study. It's not guaranteed. So having general skills that you can apply elsewhere can be useful. However, I'd still like to figure out what kind of jobs to apply for. That way I can alter my approach to appeal to them but not too much.