What do you want to do when you grow up?

[James Boston]

I like this topic. I just quit my job Friday with no real other job lined up. I'm just going to see what happens.

I guess I wanted to be a rock star most of my pre-teen and teenage years. I had a band, and playing my guitar was all I really was interested in. That just sort of faded away when I couldn't find people to start bands with, couldn't make money, etc... While attending junior college, I took a job at a radio station and fell in love with radio. Rock DJ became my new calling. Then getting paid became my new calling as I was making horrible money. I took a position at a radio station doing sales. I liked it and did really well - I billed 1 out of 3 dollars the company made in 2006. I was then offered a management position. I started feeling trapped and worn down after time and quit yesterday. I have a few real estate deals lined up as well as some consulting work.

The point of all that is this - I think what I really wanted to do when I grew up was not listen to other people. Rock star, radio DJ, these seemed like very indepedent jobs. Even sales offered me a good bit of autonomy. Management kept me very confined.

Now, consulting and real estate never crossed my mind in earlier years, but they now offer me the opportunity to do my own thing. So, I'm not really doing what I wanted to do, but I'm taking steps at getting back to the underlying reasons I wanted to do what I did.

[PokerAmateur4]

The progression was something like:
Clown>Geologist>Astrophysicist>Cosmologis t>Rich Somehow

It's vague but I want to play poker/invest/make businesses.

If I have a passion for anything it's poker and business, if it was writing/art/whatever I'm pretty sure I'd rock it and just keep plugging away and focusing until I made it.

[matt85]

[ QUOTE ]
What do you want to do when you grow up?
I got asked that question constantly when I was a kid, and I always gave some half-assed answer. Oddly, I never sat down and tried to figure out for myself what I actually wanted to do. I'm not sure that it occurred to me that I'd have to decide. Careers were one of those things that just happened to you as you got older; like wrinkles, gray hair, and watching golf on TV.

So now I am grown up and I still don't know what I want to do. I'm halfway through my working life and still can't decide. I've had all sorts of jobs, many of which I did quite well, but none of them felt like a "calling" or whatever the hell I'm supposed to feel. So I have some questions.

1) What did you want to do when you grew up?
2) Did you actively decide upon a career?
3) If so, is that the career you now have?
4) Do you have some "dream job" that you'd love to pursue but have not?
5) How old is too old to start a career from scratch?
6) Why won't Jessica Alba return my calls?

[/ QUOTE ]

1) I wanted to play football (soccer). I played at a premier league club while I was at school and figured hopefully if it does go to [censored] i'll go somewhere in the lower leagues. Went to [censored] more so than I ever though possible for various reasons and by 18 it probably wasnt an option anymore. Then went to college ('Banking will do theres lots of money in that'). Figured life is too short to be a slave to money and went off to train as a pilot which aside from running my own business(es) at some point is pretty much the dream job. In what capacity of flying I still dont know but its going to be a lot of fun finding out.

2) Yes.

3) Its the career im working towards.

4) I guess if I'm honest the only thing I would like to do if I had a load of time would be to go back to school/college and get the grades that I really could have got if i actually tried. They were pretty good in comparison too most but i literally put zero effort into education past about 15 and still breezed it with ok grades. We were sorting off talking Oxford/Cambridge/Medical school potential in hindsight.

5) I know commercial pilots who didnt start flying until well into their 40's so based on that I would say 40's+ for pretty much anything apart from perhaps the afromentioned atheltic endevours and maybe medicine/architecture type stuff.

6) She wont return mine either. Bitch.

[KDawg]

I've wanted to be different things at different times, but, I'm gonna assume what we wanted to be in late High School when we were looking at colleges

1) I wanted to be a professional Jazz musician. I was able to get into a very good music school and did it for two years before I chose having a social life over practicing 10 hours a day. Really though, in the end, I probably just didn't have what it took to do it for a living

2)yes I did. I worked hard at it for a long time until I realized that it probably wasn't for me. I've drifted since and still don't have a diploma, though I'm working on changing that now

3) no, I'm not fully sure what I'll end up doing for a career as there are a couple of paths ahead of me

4)two jobs really, I'd like to be a decent sized wine distributor or be involved in film production. Not really sure how to pursue them at this point, and I'm just focused on finally getting my degree

5)I don't think anyone is ever too old to change careers if they really want to

6) she won't return my calls either [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

[PilotMatt]

[ QUOTE ]

5) I know airline pilots who didnt start flying until well into their 40's so based on that I would say 40's+ for pretty much anything apart from perhaps the afromentioned atheltic endevours and maybe medicine/architecture type stuff.

[/ QUOTE ]

Just be careful on that, Commercial pilots are required to retire at age 60 in the USA. In europe, i think they just changed the law to 65. Also, you won't take much money (think 40-50k) until you upgrade to captain and that may take 5-10 years.

What country are you in?

[Sephus]

a functioning human being.