What do you want to be when you grow up?
Way back…
I remember growing up on the farm playing around with my siblings and sometimes my imaginary friends, just being happy and free. I didn’t care or even had thoughts about what I should do when I grow up.
And to be honest, even now that I truly enjoy my career it’s still a journey of growing and venturing into different paths to create a career and life that works for me.
If you asked me at the age of 11 what I want to be when I grew up, I would most likely have said, I just want to be happy and free that’s it. Sounds silly I thought but there is so much truth in that for me.
As you get older it’s hard and sometimes almost impossible but if you don’t find what makes you happy and brings you the joy then work becomes a job you have to do rather than a career you want to pursue.
A few years later…
In high school, we had to take these career aptitude tests to help us find out what to do after school. Needless to say, my interests looked very sad. From the endless career options, I only had three career options that showed very slight interest. You should’ve seen the others — bar graphs that looked like the New York skyline and they even had special marks if it’s pointing towards very high interests.
Well so what were my options — Study Law, go into IT, or pursue secretarial jobs. Not saying none of these isn’t important or exciting but just didn’t sound like I would be pursuing happiness or freedom.
That’s only when I realized, oh crap what am I going to do, I enjoy nothing…(not entirely true but that was my 17-year-old logic)
Past and future conflicts…
I have to backtrack a bit here. Remember I mentioned I grew up on a farm, well we didn’t have computers never-mind the internet! Moving to the city at age 13, I was horrified by this thing called a computer.
Why do you ask me? It’s so easy to use….right, NO!
I was anxious, nervous, scared (I almost cried, ok maybe I did a little) and so I hated every computer class.
After my first class, I was convinced that I would never have the need to use one, I just have to pass this class and in high school, I can drop it as soon as it becomes an optional class. At that time I was convinced that I wouldn’t ever use a computer again, what possibly would I do with computers in the future anyway.
Going into high school I realized that I still had a few years left before I can drop the computer class and I couldn’t accept that I was emotionally being defeated by a computer!
Past and future meet…
Nerd alert! What do I do when I can’t do it? I do it even better :) by the end of high school, I was the computer class leader and top student.
No one knew I actually hated and sucked at it at first (besides my parents because I was moaning to them every day about it) and it didn’t matter either what matters is that I could overcome my fear so that one day I could find my passion.
Don’t be held back by your fears because you never know what passions are waiting for you on the other side of fear.
In retrospect, I UX’ed my way to a solution. First I realized I have a problem — why am I struggling while everyone else is doing just fine. What can I do to get better at it and what do I need? I got my first desktop computer at age 16 and I worked on that thing every day until I could do it in my sleep! I knew it was a success because it resulted in good grades.
Future…
When it came to the point where I had to choose what I want to study — it was easy.
My dad simply asked me, what are you going to study? My answer: “anything with computers.” If my dad asked me what I would do with that — that would have been a more difficult discussion because I did not know and I didn’t for a long time after that either.
I went on to study Socio-Informatics. Heck, it was tough but I enjoyed my studies, why I was happy, I was free and I was growing.
Now…
It took me 5 years after my studies to start finding my direction. Where am I? I’m happy and I’m free :) What I do is I solve problems creatively more specifically it’s called UX Design.
In my opinion, if you don’t know what you want to be when you grow up or even now, my 13-year-old advice — “Find your happy, overcome your fears and you never know it might lead you to your passion.”
You decide. I choose to strive for happiness.
