when i grow up...

When I was younger, I felt the number one question asked at school (besides "does anyone have any questions?") was "what do you want to be when you grow up?" This question both inspired me and frustrated me. I had my dreams for the future, but was annoyed that we were constantly forced to keep our eye on some distant unforeseeable future - why couldn't we enjoy being kids? It's not like I was Peter Pan and refusing to grow up, I just knew that whatever answer I gave then wouldn't hold true now. 

Around the age of eight or nine, I decided I wanted to be a priest. I would set up my bedroom with teddy bears sitting in their 'pews', taking some crackers from downstairs, and perform the mass - giving the "bread" to the teddy bears (though I would just eat the crackers afterwards). Then I realized the obstacle: females weren't allowed to be priests. So I frustratingly gave up on that idea ... and now have a bizarre amount of opinions on the church.

A year or so after, I decided I wanted to be a librarian. I would take all my books off the bookshelves, fill out cards for whoever was taking out what, and then take a little pen and "scan" the barcode of each book. I'm not sure where that dream went, but seeing that it's all done by computers nowadays with no personal touch, that dream didn't really go anywhere.

Whenever the Olympics were on I would dream of being a gymnast or a skater; I would hop onto the top of my couch and go from one wall to the other performing 'gymnast moves', or twirl around on my tiled kitchen floor doing a 'triple sow cow' (that's what I thought it was called). But then I'd hear the stories that the athletes had been training since they were five or something and realized I didn't stand a chance.

The dream that lasted the longest was also probably the most ridiculous - I wanted to be a singer/songwriter/actress/script-writer - all at once. I was obsessed with Spice Girls and Britney Spears, and wanted to be up on a stage performing like them. I had daydreams about being discovered in a mall for a part in a movie (given that my city isn't a hotspot for movie-making, this would never happen). I would write song lyrics and create album covers for my made-up girl group Sunflower Girls (best name ever, huh?) and would write plot outlines and little bits of script for whatever movie I was going to 'star' in, usually co-starring with Leonardo DiCaprio or whatever actor was hot at the time. 

I would sign up for every air band and talent show my school had, auditioned for one of the school plays, and then got my chance to dive into 'film life' during university. After all this, it's safe to say I'll never win a Grammy or Oscar, but that's okay with me.

Alongside this quartet of careers was another set of dreams - to be a teacher/novelist/web-and-graphic designer. This answer to "what do you want to be when you grow up?" is the one that has survived to this day. I realized it in grade ten during careers class (which I felt was a pretty pointless class) - it would be great to interact with others in an environment where I'd teach them but I'd also learn, and during the summer months I could just write or design. While I've been doing the latter two for a while, the first dream keeps meeting an obstacle: namely, getting into teachers college. So we'll see how that goes.

After all this, I've asked myself why the answer to this question automatically has to be a career. Or why it was to be something tangible - married, white picket fence, 2.5 kids or driving a luxury car or making sure I see place A, B, C before I turn 25. Me and my closest friends recently came up with our own bucket list and I love the idea of these lists for short-term goals and ideas ... but being asked when you're 10 to see where you'll be when you're 30 just doesn't seem logical. 

Although I'm technically an adult, when I grow up I want to be two things: happy and secure. Happy with what I have, who I'm with, and secure with a roof over my head and enough food in my fridge. Who knows what career I'll end up in - if I could be paid to be a student, I'd be a student forever.

This whole jumble of words is a bit of a process for me ... I've been known to hold onto the past too much, known to let it affect how I see things presently ... but now I just want to see the past as steps to where I got to now, that I need to keep climbing higher instead of lingering two floors down.

Long rambling post is long and full of rambling!

What dreams did you have when you were younger?

How did you envision yourself 'growing up'?