What should I be when I grow up?

Yes what should I be, for me this is a moral question, doing a job just to pay the bills leaves me feeling a bit dirty, wrong and a tad bit soul less. It is no judgement on the majority of people who do work just for the money, I think it is perfectly practical and we can’t all find meaning from our paid employment (there are plenty of hobbies, volunteer work and creative outlets that provide meaning too). However I am stuck with the notion that if I’m going to spend that much time and energy on something then I better enjoy it and find value in it. I have done much soul searching in an attempt to cure myself of this but it still sticks. I figure it is part of my nature, the part that is romantic, impractical, adventuresome and extremely ideal – amazingly age and life experience has not wearied this out of me.

 I am currently in an ideal position at the moment where I have taken a break from work and can choose to re-enter the work force in a different field, due to this I spend a fair bit of time thinking about what I want to be when I grow up. To be honest I have been thinking up vocations for myself and researching them for a very long time. I often joke that I think up a new job every week. This is what I have considered recently.

• Librarian
• Dietician
• Massage Therapist
• Run my own Wellness Retreat
• Teacher (Primary, University, English as a Second Language)
• Personal Trainer/ Fitness Instructor
• Editor/ Writer
• Corporate TaiChi Instructor (lunch time workplace classes)

I’m sure there are more, these are the ones that come to the front of my mind. What amazes me is that I am so fortunate to have so much opportunity and so unfortunate to have only one lifetime to try different paths. I am like a rabbit in the headlights frozen with the abundance of choice what should I pursue? What if I spend lots of time on it and it isn’t for me? What if my family work hard to support me and it isn’t for me? What if I’m no good at it or I don’t like it? The fear has me stunned.

I have tossed around the idea for about a decade that an agency that specialises in adult work experience would be fantastic. Both for people that want to test out new career ideas and for those who want to see what all sorts of jobs are like. I would love to drive a tram, assist a visual merchandiser, farm some kind of plant life, deliver flowers and many, many more things. I don’t want to these careers forever but I’d love to taste them for a week or so. There must be a business in this somewhere, I could be on permanent work experience and help people experience different work options hmmmmm.

I am mother, I am unavailable

I have been inspired by my good friend and blogger Rosalinda Batson to write my very own International Women’s Day blog post. I agree with Rosalinda and many others that feminism has stalled. I don’t know why it has stalled but there are still so many unspoken social expectations of women. I could wax lyrical from an academic or intellectual perspective but I thought a bit of exploration of my own recent experience might be interesting. I am of course a white, middle class fairly privileged person so my problems are hardly significant but do point to, I think, a missed opportunity.

I recently become a mother, my 18 month old is allowing me to write this blog as she sleeps. I choose to resign from my career, in corporate governance, to become a stay at home mother. I didn’t know what to expect when I became a Mum but I genuinely love staying at home and being the primary carer of my daughter. I have found though that I am becoming isolated and one dimensional, and I miss intellectual stimulation and adult conversation. I also miss having some financial independence, I have always been used to earning my own money and having freedom about how I spend it (after the bills are paid).

I don’t want to put my child into care to return to work even part-time, I highly value this time with her before she goes to school. I would love to do some small projects in the evenings or weekends from home, I even set up my own business in an attempt to facilitate this www.elindapak.com . I have not gotten any work from this mainly because I don’t have the time in work hours to drum up business, network and basically sell myself to potential clients. Unless they would be happy to go to a child friendly café and have my divided attention. I feel like an untapped resource lying dormant for the next 5 years (maybe longer if I have more children), by the time my child goes to school and I am ready to reenter the work force I am concerned my skills and experience will be considered outdated.  

I feel that my main obstacle is that others cannot work out how I could juggle being a mother and completing work at home. Mothers of young children are not seen to be ‘available’ for any kind of paid work unless their child is in care.  Organisations want people who are available during the day, during the week. The fact is they don’t need me to be available for the kind of work I do, I can make some phone calls while my daughter sleeps during the day, complete work and send e-mails in the evenings or weekends. Process mapping work that peers see as time consuming and complex takes me no time at all to whip up. I have an amazingly supportive husband who does more than his fair share of the housework. However the above information is not ‘allowed’ to be expressed in a sales pitch even though it is silently being wondered about. Maybe one day we might be a little more creative about how we source employees or contractors. Hopefully the outcomes and outputs we produce for organisations will become more important than the number of hours they imagine we are available for.

This only skims the surface but – maybe some food for thought.