What was your dream job as a child?

My first coach asked this question – not when I was her client, but of herself when she recently reached a place where she no longer needed to add her earnings to the family purse. The answer she got was one we’d talked about during one of our sessions (‘cos that’s what can happen when a coach is coaching a fellow coach!) and it made me smile as I listened to her announcement 🙂

She repeated the question during the announcement when she told her all her clients, both past and present, to let them know about her changed focus – and she encouraged us to ask ourselves this question: what had we loved to do when we were between the ages of 5 and 15?

The problem is… if I’m to answer truthfully, I’ve got nothing.

Nothing in terms of any potential career that is, ‘cos the answer is that during those years I read, listened to music, played classical guitar, swam and sailed. I felt responsibility for keeping my younger siblings safe, and I spent a lot of time on my own. When I was in company, I felt there was an expectation to entertain, amuse, flirt (in later years), whereas I felt awkward and ill-prepared.

But being an outsider gave me plentiful opportunity to observe people, and to notice stuff, which my brain filed away in a manner that enabled me to pull out useful and relevant stuff at the right time – a great preparation for working with people. That awkwardness grew into an ability to make people feel at ease, and to be a great listener.

I didn’t have an obvious career path, ‘cos what I loved to do during those years was simply a method of keeping myself occupied and entertained. What I did instead was to use who I was during those years to develop skills which would become of use to future me.

When she asked this question just a few weeks ago, I had a momentarily feeling of loss – for the sister I grew up with (who was 14 months younger than I) always knew she wanted to work with children – and did so, starting as a nanny, then a nursery nurse, finally moving to work in a school.

But then I remembered that my other siblings – like me – felt no such vocation. We knew we would work, we just didn’t have a dream of what form that would take. My father did a job he was a good at and mostly enjoyed – but it was by no means a dream job. He was a pragmatic and responsible man who did what needed to be done. And I think we three were the same. We had no expectation of having a dream we could follow, so we simply got to work earning our living.

That’s not to say we’ve been unhappy – for we’ve worked to live, rather than lived for our work. I know the old saying goes that you’ll never work a day of your life if you do what you love. The flipside is that some people have tried doing what they love for a job… only to discover it’s become hard work, and so they’ve stopped loving it.

Do I wish I’d found what I loved when I was younger? You betcha. But I’d rather be grateful I did finally find it. In fact, I found two things – psychology and writing… which means I have a constant battle to find time enough for both. But I can work on methodologies to solve that problem.

But if I could earn a good living by simply reading… would I snatch at it? I might be tempted, but equally I worry I might be risking making reading feel too much like hard work 😉

Did you have a dream career as a child? Did you follow the dream, or find a new one? If you did fulfil your dream – how did it turn out?

© Debra Carey, 2023