“What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up?”

In a lot of peoples childhoods, there are three constants: crying, temper tantrums, and the question "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I'm not sure why adults asked this. Was it to gauge our interests and learn more about us? Was it to prepare us for the capitalist future we are all doomed to experience? Who knows. When asked this question, kids usually choose an actual job. Policeman, fireman, nurse, doctor, the list goes on. As people grow up, their interests will change, and naturally so will their answer to the question. One thing I've found is that despite these changes, the answer is still a job. Even if the answer changes from doctor to psychiatrist to teacher, it's still a job. Why do I bring this up? Well let's say dear reader, you asked me what I wanted to be later in life. I only have one real answer for this question:

"Happy."

Anything else I would say is probably a lie. Why? Because I don't know what I want to do! I am at the age where I really need to consider what I want to do after I leave school. I'm sure a large portion of those reading this are also in the same boat. Maybe by the time I finish writing this, it will be a useful post to come back and read. Or maybe it won't. The best way to see which it is the case is by explaining why I feel the way I do.

As a kid, I wanted to be a scuba diver. You see, liking fish is not just a recent occurrence of mine. In fact, loving animals has been a part of me since birth. There are only five animals I look at and actively want removed from existence. In case you're wondering, the list includes mosquitos, cockroaches, march flies, giant centipedes, and every parasite known to Mother Nature. Technically that's more than five but this is my post, so shush. Anyways, I had a solid two year stint with being an aspiring diver before getting lost.

A couple years later, I was on a road trip scrolling through the App Store when I found a game called "Ace Attorny: Dual Destinies". Ignorant to the fact I played the fifth game in the series first, I fell in love with it. As soon as I finished the game, I vowed there and then to become a lawyer, a fact those who know me might remember. After a long period of unknowing, I had finally found my calling! My dreams were not going to be shattered! I had the ambition and confidence of ten billion lions! Until I learnt something heart breaking. See, the problem was that the game was completely inaccurate to anything but Japanese law. The closest thing you could compare an Ace Attorney game to in terms of the western legal system is the Amber Heard trial. My vision of the legal system was clouded by a sea of Ace Attorney filled wonder, I had failed to see what the world was really like. When I did eventually set my eyes on the proceedings of a real court case (watching a video on YouTube), I almost fell asleep. All I could think was dammit people, you're meant to point at each other and yell "Objection!", submit surprise evidence during the actual trial! Where's the drama! Where's the suspense! With that knowledge in mind, my enthusiam to become a lawyer was drastically decreased. I still have it in the back pocket of my mind, it's just not a priority. Later on, I decided I wanted to become a psychologist and try help people with problems! That's nice, I think. Except I realised later on that I would probably be helping with pretty heavy stuff. Now for a friend, I would happily do that. My arms are always wide open for anyone if they need emotional support. For a stranger, I would need to open myself up more. Being a psychologist has also been lodged in the back of my mind for a while alongside being a lawyer. Yet... I didn't feel right about it. I still don't in fact.

I really started to struggle around last year. Despite constantly saying this wasn't the case, it felt like my school was pressuring me into thinking about what I'm doing after. Am I going to go to university, will I get an apprenticeship, what about a gap year? I didn't and still don't know these things. I'm less than two years away from finishing school and I feel more lost than ever. How did child me have such confidence in what he wanted to be in twenty or so years while I can't even fathom what I'm doing in 2025! I started to fixate on possible options but still couldn't make my mind up. For example, I think University sounds terrifying because it's just four more years of school. A gap year sounds good except what the hell would I do? And an apprenticeship? That requires me figuring out the job aspect of what I want to do, and we all know how that's going. I couldn't figure out the next step in my life and it was killing me. Anything I chose would leave me sad in a pretty big way. What ever should I do?

Quite recently, I was daydreaming up in a second home on the mountains. An average weekend, yet consistently the best part of my week. For the longest time I found that odd. I usually live in a pretty modern house, suburban neighbourhood type of place. The best way I can describe the atmosphere there is dry and bland. Everything feels so artificial (cause it is) and soul-draining, at times I genuinely hate it. Being in the mountains amongst nature however, I find that invigorating. If I can have the protection of a modern house and still be enjoying Mother Nature at the same time, that's paradise. And that's exactly what I experienced up in the mountains. I felt happy. All the talk about jobs and lawyers and psychologists don't make me happy (with the exception of Ace Attorney). I'll talk about this more in depth in a later post, but happiness is an essential part of human existence. If you feel sad about the future and have the option to not do it, then don't! Think about a future where you will be happy and try aim for that. Now you might he wondering what the hell that has to do with the question mentioned earlier. Let me explain.

If someone were to ask me the question "what do you want to do later in life?", I would tell them this:

"I want to move to New Zealand, find somewhere rural and isolated yet close enough to Auckland where I can live and open a cafe. I would live in the attic of that cafe, or in a seperate house out in the massive lakeside backyard. When I'm not chilling in my house on break, I would work my ass off to make the cafe the coziest place in the world. As for what I would have in my house, I would be surrounded by bookshelves in the living room, a fireplace burning in the center of a wall. During the winter, me and my two to three cats, ragdoll and rescue, would all snuggle together as I read myself to sleep. Cozy blankets and all."

A brief and yet all too revealing glimpse of what I currently want in life. And I would be saying all of that with a smile on my face. Now the future is a cruel beast, and while I currently want that to be my future, fate might have other plans. Who knows, maybe I'll wake up after posting this and decide I'm going to Canada instead. The point is, think about something in your mind that you're happy with doing in the future. Most importantly, It doesn't matter how far along in your life that has to be, just as long as you have some semblance of an idea. If you're passionate about going into a career, follow that passion. If you already have a retirement plan set up, work your ass off so you can live that out. Don't stress about deciding what the next step is in life. Just figure out what your current dream is and backtrack your way to figuring out "How am I going to do this? How long will this take me? Does talking about this make me feel good?" As soon as you have your answers (if the last question is not a definite yes, change the plan until it is), start working towards that, no matter how long it takes. As long as you're happy and not starving, what's the worse that could happen?

Yay he wrote something deep! Took me long enough haha. I'm not exactly sure whether I'm the most qualified person to be giving advice on this stuff, I'm still in school after all. The funny thing is, I don't write to teach others a lesson or give advice. I just write to get my thoughts out there in the world. Whether or not those thoughts turn into a lesson, good or bad, I can never really tell. I can also never tell if the writing makes sense or not. Oh well, throw it the stuff at a wall and see what sticks is my logic. If nothing else, I hope whoever read this enjoyed it and is able to figure out what they want for their life in the future.