My life's work

[chanaleh]

ablock sent me mail this morning saying,

when you were in high school. did you know what you wanted to do w/ your life? what job?

Well, pretty much, yeah: book publishing. That is -- in high school I guess I expected to want to do editing rather than production/typesetting, but that was more because I didn't know how to use any graphics tools (and didn't know design was a visual skill I would turn out to have).

When I was six years old, I wanted to write books. This was my career plan throughout childhood. (And I did write lots of little stories, and make up lots of other ones in my head. I was a damn sight more prolific then than I've ever been since, I fear.)

Then when I was in about 7th grade, it occurred to me that people actually get PAID to do PROOFREADING and other kinds of book editing. And that this might be a somewhat more reliable profession than creative writing. So that was what I wanted to do ever since. (Perhaps not coincidentally, it was also about the time I started writing poetry -- some of which I still don't hate -- to the virtual exclusion of prose. Did I, at age 12, give myself permission to quit engaging with fiction as a discipline? Because I was being pragmatic about my life path? *sigh*)

Still, I knew from right then (and, in all fairness, probably for my entire conscious life) that I would major in English in college. I am about the only person I know who (a) knew this going in and (b) never even considered any other choices. Yes, there are other things I could have done well if I'd pursued them -- even, dare I say, math and science. But they weren't what I was about.

Avocational note: For most of high school, my leisure pursuits were more about performing arts: music, theater, even dance (since I did swing choir, which included dance routines, which I adored). In college, I dropped back out of that and focused on publishing-related interests: poetry, layout for student magazines, the school paper. This was how I learned to use PageMaker and QuarkXPress, which is the skill set I eventually parlayed into my current paying career. For which I am grateful. But it's only since I started at MIT that I've really come back around and started doing music and theater and even dance again, in my Copious Free Time. For which I am also grateful.

This whole aspect of my selfhood came up in discussions with Jonathan-my-jo earlier this year. He's still trying, at age 31, to figure out what it is that he most feels like doing with his life (for money, anyway). And here I've never known what it's like not to know. (Which maybe makes it hard for me to help other people uncover their focus. What do you mean, you don't have a clear sense?)

Anyone else?

Comments

[laurens10.livejournal.com]

When I was small, I wanted to be an archaeologist.

Then, when I reached high school, I wanted to become a writer, and I spent a lot of time writing. My teachers told me that I was good at it. I applied to Brandeis with an eye to either their creative writing program or their comparative lit program. Once I arrived at Brandeis, I decided against entering in the creative writing program. I chickened out; I didn't want to compete in order to get in. Instead, I focused on comp lit, but after realizing I could never learn enough Russian in my short time at Brandeis to compete against the Russian students in a Russian lit class, I changed from comparative lit to something less demanding, European Cultural Studies.

Junior year, literary theory smacked me on the head, deflated my wind, and sent me into a place of academic despair. I kept my major but bailed from any interest in the study of literature. I started a minor in computer science, since I always had an interest in computers... but more as a hobby than a profession.

After graduation and three years in the computer world, I realized that my interest in computers would and should be a hobby rather than a profession. Basically, I have no ambition. I like programming, but I never want to be a head programmer. Its a nice way of making money, but if I wanted to do something meaningful for myself in my life, I should work with my talents and what I have desire for.

Now, I am in grad school in religion with the hopes that I can enter into a PhD program relating to history so that one day I can research and write. I guess a historian is like an archaeologist. In some odd manner, I've come full circle.