As a child, I was asked so many times what I wanted to be when I grew up. Although I haven't been asked this in many years, it's now me who is doing the asking. What do I want to be when I grow up? For me, it's more about how many of my interests do I pursue on a regular basis, rather than taking a career placement test and turning any one of these paths into a lifelong career.
When I was young I thought I would be a great diplomat and then I learned about "diplomacy" and not always saying exactly what's on my mind. I learned pretty quickly that being a diplomat probably wasn't in my or anyone else's best interests.
Languages are my first love. I've studied various languages, some more so than others and love to translate both spoken and written languages. I love learning different alphabets, the structure of languages, slang in languages...all of it. I enjoy watching movies in the original languages with subtitles and see how much I can understand on my own.
Similar to wanting to be an interpreter, I thought one of the coolest things would be to study languages, simply for the love of languages. I have lots of language books and once in a while I'll go through one of them or study a little bit online.
Learning about other cultures, historical and modern, has always fascinated me. I could see myself learning languages abroad, living within different communities and experiencing local customs.
I didn't know the term "technical writer" when I was young but I always liked writing things down, reading instructions and referring to manuals when I was learning something new. Things always made more sense to me when I could see them written.
Although I haven't had a full-time career in any of these professions, I've studied them and I suppose on some level, I'm a little bit of each one in my daily life. I have my own version of diplomacy: friends and family know that if they ask me a question, I'll give an honest answer. I still love languages and glean knowledge whenever and where ever I can fit it into an already full schedule. And I pursue the writing on a daily basis, not in the sense of being a professional technical writer in the automotive, aviation or computing industries, but every day I write something somewhere.
I didn't want to be any of those! The space race was on...I wanted to be an astronaut...that didn't happen but I did date a lady for awhile whose brother was an astronaut...he went up 3 or 4 times :)
What lofty proposals for yourself. Great list.Thank you. h5
These are things that I never thought about. Thanks for sharing this interesting list.
select one here...