A life selected for you by a 17 year old… or his parents.

Posted on January 11, 2009

If you follow the classic model of growing up, that’s what you’ll end up with – a career, a life, as picked out for you by a 17 year old, or your parents (when you were 17)

Neither of my parents are able to tell me what they had in mind for me when I was growing up, but I’ve spent a block of time thinking about this lately, and I’ve come up with a fairly good picture of what they wanted for me. I was mostly a “good son”, and because I didn’t have anything that much better in mind, I went along with it. I’m sure that if I’d had an amazing aptitude and love for a subject, or had shown outstanding ability in some non-academic field, or even if I’d just evidenced a passion for an area of study, that they would have supported me in it – but I didn’t, so for a few years, I kinda drifted along the path they had in mind. I’m sure that if I’d been a bit more focussed, a bit more goal driven, or perhaps just a better son, I’d now have a very safe and stable career.

As an Accountant.

As a 17 year old, it didn’t seem like a bad choice. I was good at that sort of thing (accounting and economics were the subjects at which I excelled at high school), and in the absence of having anything better in mind, I just went with the flow – at least until my last year of University, when I dropped out, and took a job on a helpdesk, thus kicking off my IT career.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I don’t resent what my parents guided me towards – by their standards, it was a great direction for me to be heading in. My parents both came from “good, solid working class” backgrounds, and wanted me to be moving a step up from that. A family friend was a successful accountant, and lived the sort of life they would have rather liked to have lived – new cars and boats every so often, a couple of nice holiday homes (we used to holiday in the same area, but in a caravan). Being an accountant means you wear a suit and tie, you work in an office, in a nice chair, behind a nice desk, and you probably (in a few years) have a staff, and get called “Mr.”. You don’t do hard physical work all day, wearing a singlet and shorts, or drive a truck. All of that adds up to, by my parents standards, Success. (capital S intended).

Now, albeit via another route, I’m successful in the same way. I wear a suit, have a staff, work in an office.

Now that I’m there, I’m not overly happy with it.

Which is why I’ve been working on my photography, so I can have an income from that. Which is why I’m (back) working on a strategy of multiple income streams, so I don’t get locked into 8 hours a day of the same thing. Which is why I’m targeting my efforts on streams that can be, at least partially, self sustaining.

More to follow, as action is taken.

Comments

Comments

Viewing 2 Comments

 

Trackbacks

(Trackback URL)

close Reblog this comment
Powered by Disqus · Learn more
blog comments powered by Disqus