When I Grow Up I Want To Be...

For the past few weeks, other than spending a good portion of it crying, my boyfriend and I have been working on our garden to get our mind off of things.  I have spent my time covered in dirt, whilst moving literally tonnes of concrete, chippings, soil and whatever else needed shifting in our garden.  In theory I should now be proper stacked and aiming to compete in a woman’s body building competition, fortunately, my arms seem to be just as puny as they were before and I am still the proportions of a lady.

During this time, other than going to work, I have spent it without a scrap of makeup on, hair just tied back out the way and in old clothes, even wearing, dare I say it, trainers (they were one of the few old pairs of shoes I was willing to be ruined by being covered in mud).  I have even ventured outside looking in such a way, and do you know what, I didn’t give a rats ass.

All this has made me realise exactly what I want out of life. 

One day, I want to have a plot of land out in the countryside where me and my boyfriend can build our own little house.  I want to fill my little house with a lovely little family and loads of animals, including two dogs, two cats, some chickens, some ducks, a goat and a pig (obviously not all of these will live within my house... children can sleep outdoors...joking!).  I want my own little veggie plot and to spend my days looking after my own little mini farm (children included there), preferably with my own small business that I can run from home.

So this is what I want to be when I grow up... happy.  I don’t have a particular career or business idea in mind, but I am trying to have a bloody good think about it every day (if you have any business ideas for me, I would be more than happy to hear them).

Having thought about this recently I had a bit of a reminisce about what I wanted to be when I was younger.  I’ll be honest, I change my mind alot, especially as I’ve got older, but I will go through the main ones:

First up, Artist.  So when I was young my granddad taught us how to draw and we used to practice down his house every Sunday.  I honestly think you can’t learn to draw, if your artistic, it’s already in you, so I think my sister and I had already inherited then genes (how big headed does that sound), but heck, I’m sure it didn’t hurt to practice.  So from this, at a very very young age, I decided I wanted to be an artist.

Next, Vet.  This is the main one that stuck right the way through school, or at least right up until GCSE where they send you on work experience.  Now I love animals, hence the reason why I wanted to be a vet, but my work experience week put me off it somewhat.  Given the amount of little animals that were put down in that one week I was there are then the way that some were treated after surgery, this well and truly put me off.  Given the chance again I wish that I had stuck with this side of things, any job with animals would have been amazing.  To be honest, I don’t think I would have quite made the cut to train to be a vet, I’m just not clever enough, but I wish I had stuck to wanting to work with animals.

I no longer really had a specific career in mind, but knew I wanted to work doing something science related, particularly biology.  Clearly at some point I lost track of this and then decided to start a degree in computer science.  I now have literally no idea why I chose to do this, I actually hate computers, ironic, considering I spend my working day on them and obviously use one to create this blog. 

After a year of Computer Science I decided to leave the course.  Now, this goes to show, quite how quickly I can change my mind, over the summer holiday I was helping a friend with their accounting/maths, course and had a thought that, ‘ooh, I can do this, maybe I should be an accountant’. 

After finding out there was no more spaces left for the accountancy course for Cardiff for the next year I made a literally 2 minute decision to go and do Maths instead.  I based three years and potentially the rest of my life on a two minute decision.  Listen up kids, don’t do it, have a really good think about what you want to be, don’t just take a course purely for that course, think what you want to do one day.  Don’t do it for the money or any other shallow reasons; really think what you want to do for the rest of your life, because a degree will be a good boost in the right direction, or it will be three years for nothing.  Wait, that’s just painting it black, it’s still a good experience, and I have to say that my maths degree hasn’t let me down so far, I have my job because of it, I’m just saying pick a degree and a career doing something you love.

Finally, after working in my job for a few years I decided that teaching seemed like a good option.  There is a bit of a shortage of maths teachers in secondary schools so I was pretty much guaranteed a job at the end to a certain extent and it was making the most of my degree.  I got my place, quit my job and started training as a maths teacher.  This was the only time since turning 17 that I have ever been technically unemployed.  I say technically because I continued to work weekends at my old job, I can’t help it, I just don’t believe in not working.  After two months of teaching children and working at what can only be described as the most depressing school ever, I decided to quit and was lucky enough to return to my old job.

Right now, I am a Clinical Data Manager, I work in a clinical research unit where we test new drugs out on volunteers (if you want to know more about this kind of thing ask, you have no idea how much volunteers can get paid for doing these trials!).  It’s not exactly my dream job, but it’s flexible and I don’t have to spend hours travelling, which basically means I can spend more time doing exactly what I want to do.

What I have learnt is that work/a career is not the be all and end all.  If you’re lucky enough to be in a job which you love then enjoy it and make the most of it, but if, like me, a job is a job, a means to an end, then let’s be grateful that we do have a job, because it’s just there to give us the money to do all the things that we really want to do.

So having said all this, and having rambled on for what seems like forever, I would really like to know what you want to be when you grow up, or what you always wanted to be.  Let me know!

Thanks for sticking with me,

All of my pictures are edited using Picmonkey.

p.s. Don’t forget to follow me on twitter.

Love,