What I want to be when I grow up is… If I was to ask you this, what would your answer be?

At school, it was a bit like just going through the motions. I settled on a career in physiotherapy at 15. This indicated the A-levels I went on to enroll in only to quit the sixth form a few short months later.

3 months shy of my 17th birthday, I landed my first ever job. For an introvert, working in retail took a lot of getting used to and was quite frankly terrifying. But still, I had plenty of time to figure out what I wanted to do, didn’t I?

I used to think I had all the time in the world. But each birthday sped up time. Every day life changed, choices were made, and suddenly there I was resigned to the fact that I would be working in shops until the day I died. But one thing was for sure, nothing really stuck.

What I Want to Be When I Grow Up Is…

My working life is now 23 years to this point. During this time, I had worked retail almost exclusively. I have been a cleaner and a waitress too, but these didn’t really stick for longer than a few months before I had my feet back in a shop. Before my 30th birthday, I enrolled in a college course doing entry-level bookkeeping to want a new career.

I learned how to communicate with other people. I learned how to fit in despite feeling like I was out of my depth and hating every single second. I even pushed forward with a career in higher management in one place. But nothing ever really felt like it was right for me.

The years were whizzing by in a blur of alcohol before becoming knee-deep in nappies and raising a child. Relationships came and went, and still, I was no closer to figuring out what I want to be when I grow up.

Society would have me believe I was a failure. Because I didn’t knuckle down when I was younger and find my dream career, I was destined for nothingness. A lifetime of minimum wage jobs designed to meet my basic needs without ever allowing me to reach my full potential.

But did I have full potential to reach? And if so, what was it?

Looking back, I truly feel like 16 is way too young to know how you want to spend the rest of your life. What do most 16-year-olds know about life, about having a career, and about being a responsible grown-up? I am going to go out on a limb, and not much, really. Not in the general sense, although I dare to imagine there are some 16-year-olds with more knowledge of the world than many grown-ups.

So why, at this tender young age, are we expected to know what we want to be when we grow up? It is not too much to consider that the older we get, the more attuned to our desires we are, and the more thought we have given something, the better we will be at it? At 16, is everything just a shiny new toy wrapped up in a cotton wall ball that is slowly unraveling as we experience more of the world?

But back on the subject of my meaningless foray into life and was working in a shop the sum all of my life? Was this it? As I got older, I dared to hope this wouldn’t be it. I vividly remember walking home from a nightclub at 21 and someone asking me what I want to do with my life as working shops was frankly pathetic. The person in question was in university and clearly thought himself to be much better than me.

I want to be a writer, I said. He told me that I needed to get my act together, get back to education, or I would have no way of becoming a writer. Was he right? I wasn’t sure. I put it down to him be a cocky lad with a superiority complex.

Then I started this blog over 7 years ago. I don’t know how or what happened, but this love of writing I hadn’t thought about since that night came from nowhere, and suddenly, I was gripped.

What I Want To Be When I Grow Up Is A Writer

I wanted to write, and I did despite not having anything to write about. After all that time, I finally found the thing I want to do when I grow up. So I wrote. I wrote about my desire to be a writer. I dabbled in fiction, short stories, and mini-series. I wrote for myself; I wrote for other people. Yet somehow, it wasn’t deemed a proper job. It was something I did and occasionally made money.

Then my health started changing. I was diagnosed with fibromyalgia, and then I got long covid. But despite the craziness of 2020. I had a great year. I put building blocks in place, ready to create my next move. Finally, I was ready. 2021 saw me start in a haze of germs and sickness and never truly recovering from covid.

But there was a light in the tunnel. It seemed I had to sacrifice what I had to get what I wanted. And in June 2021. I finally said goodbye to the world of retail and became 100% self-employed. Back when I was younger, I used to tell people I was designed to work alone at home with no one around me. It seemed like a dream.

But today, it is a reality. And I suppose the point I am trying to get at, despite my rambling, is that it doesn’t matter if you don’t know what you want to be when you are 16. Or even 21. Because when you do know and do get there, the journey will be 100% worth it regardless of how long it takes.