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I Never Had A “Dream Job”
Because I’ve never wanted to work myself to death.
“Work” has never been something I aspired to do with my life. There has always been a fundamental understanding that you go to work and do a job that earns money to pay for all the stuff you need; but it has never been something I looked down the road and saw myself identifying myself by.
I must have been a junior in high school when I first saw honest-to-God aptitude tests and questionnaires regarding what I planned to do with the next decade-and-a-half of my life. As a tool, their usefulness is okay, I guess. At 16, 17, you’ll be off to college, soon — it’s daunting for a lot of people. It poses a lot of options which you are suddenly, personally responsible for. If you were a high school student in America, you’ve probably been conditioned to feel as though you can ruin the remaining 80 or so years of your life by making the wrong choice right now.
It’s a lot to think about, and a lot to imagine taking responsibility for, and it’s daunting. Seeing these aptitude tests for the first time was helpful for me, personally, because it gave me the impression of a direction to start thinking toward. It felt practical, to me.
Obviously, that isn’t the ultimate, perfect, and correct answer. It worked for me. It failed spectacularly for a lot of other people I knew.
