If you could do it all over again, profession or career wise, what would you do?

My dream would be to be a beekeeper. In France. I'd love to combine that with writing. But beekeeping, man... That is what I want and somehow I was destined to do. It just all went... different... in my life.

Stick with the career I should have stuck with but didn't because I thought I wasn't good enough at it.

What was it, Snoball, and was there not a way to get adequate at?

Software engineering, and it was more to do with the perception warping properties of depression rather than not actually being good enough.

I think I would have spent my 20s working much harder at music, hopefully trying to create some kind of living out of it through a combination of, idk, teaching lessons, playing, touring, recording...? I'd probably still be poor if I did that though, probably an illusion that if I had just worked harder at it

Being "poor" is relative though, poor money-wise maybe, but the poll isn't about money, it's about where your heart (secretly) lies.

I think I would have spent my 20s working much harder at music

^^^ and this as well
To be fair (to me) I use a bit of software engineering in amongst the other stuff I do for a living, and making music is still probably my biggest non work related thing, but damn.

you can't divorce this stuff from money though! What if you also want(ed) to have a family, and the thing your "heart" is in wouldn't have allowed that?

i haven't embarked on a career path yet. i think i want to be a literature professor someday.

Do it. You'll be disappointed with yourself otherwise.

you can't divorce this stuff from money though! What if you also want(ed) to have a family, and the thing your "heart" is in wouldn't have allowed that?

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), maandag 6 mei 2013 22:23 (2 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I know, I just meant money shouldn't be the leading objective here. The question was more a "what if you followed your heart and there weren't any obstacles" kind of thing.

My dream of becoming a beekeeper (kinda lol but mostly true and sad) is a same sort of choice though. I would love it, but probably would not earn enough to have a family? I don't know. I decided to not think about that for just one second...

Treeship you are awesome tbh and you should DO IT!

idk have you spent any time with bees? why a beekeeper?

I have a feeling that specialist honey has a fairly hefty price tag, so 'beekeeper with family' is probably possible.

You should go to Ardèche, Bateau Ivre. Rolling landscapes, pleasent people, small medieval villages and tons of beekeeping.

honey is expensive as i found the other day, £6 for a jar of acacia honey oy vey

I would go back to the career I had before the one I have now -- I was originally in publishing, a photo and copyright permissions editor and i LOVED LOVED LOVED it

idk have you spent any time with bees? why a beekeeper?

― there is no special cathexis with mini fried donuts (Nilmar Honorato da Silva), maandag 6 mei 2013 22:27 (19 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Because I love bees. I love the concept of beekeeping, in abstract way. But also love the practical, hands-on part of it. I *realize* I am hugely romanticizing it, but still...

I was in France once and saw a recluse beekeepery (is that an English word?) in between a river and forests. This man, he didn't see us, was just working in the field there, all day every day, taking care of his bees, and living off that. One with nature, very 19th century Germany in terms of naturalism, romanticism, but this is actually still happening! People are *doing* this! No offices, no traffic jams, no city life, no modern annoyances tied in with work. Call me naive or airy-fairy but yes, I would love that.

Van Horn Street: This was IN the Ardeche...

VegemiteGirl: Is there no way you can work in publishing right now?

my only knowledge of beekeeping is from 'the spirit of the beehive'

That will get you quite a long way tbh

xpost I've been out of the industry for 10 years, I don't even know where to start looking. Back in the day all the publishing jobs were in SF, I know Sacto is def a publishing wasteland. And then translating what I did into some kind of online thing, I dunno. I feel old when I think about it, lol

Id still not have been able to leave my provincial town but id have studied programming and not business at the shitty local college. Ideally id have given english a try at trinity or somewhere.

For whatever reason, the idea of law (specifically constitutional law) has always appealed to me.

My father encouraged me a few times to switch from useless eggheaded journalism to enology because my alma mater apparently had a good program. I think he just wanted me to learn winemaking so I could turn around and teach him, but in retrospect I think it was a field I could have enjoyed.

But the real answer is "work sucks but cornflakes don't buy themselves, so..."

@VegGirl, so you have said goodbye to it for good? Or is it still lingering somewhere, deep down? Just curious :)

@Deems: In my view you would have been an awesome stand up comedian, no joke. Like a Charlie Brooker that is actually alright tbh.

xp

Yeah i can see it, trinity, english, join the players, drop out, temple bar circuit, ...... profit

WmC: That is definitely the ultimate answer, dreams don't pay bills etc, but I wanted to step outside of that for a moment

Lol xp

Temple bar ain't that bad tbh

Ideally id have given english a try at trinity or somewhere.

― al leong the watchtower (darraghmac), Monday, 6 May 2013 21:35 (4 minutes ago)

no surrender to the protestant ascendancy

tbh if I knew what I should have done then I could start trying to do it now, but that's the problem: I've known I was in the wrong field since I was 19-20 but just kept stumbling along in the absence of any better ideas

tried having a nervous breakdown and dropping out to spur the mind on, still nothing

I do wish I'd learnt German or Russian at school but my total inability to pronounce French made me think I was no good at modern languages

ixposts. I'm in Ardeche right now (internship in documentary filmmaking) and yeah, it is pretty much paradise in terms of romanticism and nature.

I was incredibly lucky to have parents who pushed me to pursue my childhood dreams (filmmaking). I'm a little worried for the future but right now it is worth it.

For whatever reason, the idea of law (specifically constitutional law) has always appealed to me.

If it makes you feel any better, a tiny percentage of lawyers actually get to deal with "constitutional law" in any significant way, and an even tinier percent of those laws are actually engaging with important interpretive issues involving the constitution (e.g. fields like employment discrimination and criminal defense involve "constitutional law" but not in the exciting way you're imagining).

Also, a very tiny percentage of lawyers would say they are in their dream career, even if some of them had that as a dream career pre-law-school

But rly it may be sad that even for thread purposes id rather get a useful programming qualification than the dream of english or journalism or w/e

stick with my profession but ask me again in 10 years

would a lot of these professions exist in a way that would still be appealing if commerce didn't enter into it? like professional gambler would have a completely different appeal if you only won monopoly money.

anyone who says "do what you love regardless of money" is a boomer with a book to sell imo

xxpost LBI -- it's definitely still lingering, deep down.

do it for the money, regardless of love

anyone who says "do what you love regardless of money" is a boomer with a book to sell imo

― huun huurt 2 (Hurting 2), maandag 6 mei 2013 22:49 (49 seconds ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Am not a boomer, and don't have a book to sell (yet: my beekeeping book will shock the world), just asking to not think about money for a while and asking what one would really, truly, would love to do

i imagine beekeeping would be even more attractive if you weren't held to the whims of the marketplace or demanding customers or getting taxed on bees etc...

A job has to pay the bills, but you're going to be much better at something you actually care about. OTOH there are some professions (landscape painter?) where only about a dozen people in the world are going to be able to make it their living.

imagine

there's always a difference between fantasy and reality/ be careful with what you wish for

@VegGirl: Awesome! :)

xxp

Snoball understands

I'm an editor-in-chief of a Dutch newspaper. Journalism's in my blood: my granddad, dad, some uncles, all journalists. Yet no-one pushed me to pursue the same occupation, I wanted it myself. I've no complaints, not financially, nor when it comes to free time, freedom in general or other wise. And 70% of the time I love it, I really do. But the 30% of the time I don't love it can hit really hard, in a "what is it all for" kind of way. Besides, someone else could do what I am doing now. Not as good as I do, heh, but still... I don't mean to sound ungrateful, I am very lucky in many ways, and in some ways I am certainly unlucky, but I have just been thinking about this a lot. About making a big switch. Great escape, perhaps.

could you outsource that 30% for beekeeping?

beekeeping's cool, i idly daydreamed about doing it for a bit. (i even know it's called an apiary). i was under the impression there were little courses you can do on the side, in london anyway, popular with organic yummy mummy allotment types iirc. and also don't they sell "hackney honey" somewhere

That would be awesome :-D

xp

Apiary! That's it!

Beekeeping is becoming a sort of urban hipster thing to do here in Holland at the moment, but tbh I won't have any of it. Bees deserve to roam free. Just like the beekeeper.

(even though I do think, for the bees' sake, this hipster revival is a good thing)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tGLFp67OAHE

business plan imo

exactly what I'm doing. we were living on pretty meager rations for a very long time there (I can make more meals out of a 10-pound bag of potatoes than any goddamn man alive) but after years of juggling stuff I became a full-time musician in 2003. I didn't actually aspire to that, it would have felt like hoping for wings or something, but I am very very very grateful that things turned out the way they did.

Feed the bees M&M's, but you'd have to get someone to remove the brown ones, because no-one would want to buy poop coloured honey...

I kinda built my publishing job for myself, 'with my bare hands' in a way. It wasn't just a job I applied for.
I was at my lowest point in my personal life - I'd taken an extra year of uni to get a teaching credential, and discovered that I had absolutely NO desire to teach, much to my own and my family's dismay. So cut to me living at home, working a shitty factory job. I started thinking, well what do I really WANT to do? I can't do this shitty job forever. I don't want to live at home forever. I knew I somehow wanted to get into publishing. It was just an idea I had at that point, I don't think I even really knew what that would entail. So I went to the yellow pages and literally sent my resume to every publishing company I could find. I got a job with an educational publisher, and was basically bottom rung assistant/dogsbody. they gave me copyright permissions because it was the most timeconsuming MESS of a job, they'd only ever had interns doing it up til then. Which is funny because it is a very costly aspect of publishing and can screw things up royally if the papertrails aren't solid.
But yeah, I mean the job itself already existed but I found ways to make it my own and I like to think I was pretty good at it. I got to do tons of research and be creative and by the end I had kind of set up my own little fifedom

I had to give up the job to move to the US, and I did try to find other publishing jobs when I moved here but by then everything was consolidating and dying off, there wasn't a whole lot around and I needed to get work right away.

I like the job I do now, I like the company I work for. But my heart still belongs to that little publishing job.

if I were to do it all again I would want to be born to a rich family

lol ya id swap with my cousins

my dream job was being a bizarre comedian of some variety, but never had a stable enough foundation to try it out til ... probably this period in my life. my fav job was features editor of the college newspaper where i had total creative control... it was nice walking through the cafeteria and hearing people read out my headlines that'd have everyone laffin. oddly enough, i learned later my great uncle was features editor of the daily mirror in the UK.

i'd love to work in media in some capacity, but i'd probably make more money staying in my current field (copywriting), and that's a huge issue for me. i'll probably have to satisfy myself doing what I enjoy on my own time, and if bux lead from there, so be it. the field I'm in now is alright ... stable, easy hours, good money, and people are mystified as to what I actually do. it can just get soooooo damn boring sometimes.

yeah it seems to be the big determinant of whether you end up doing what you want to do or not. otherwise i'd probably just end up somewhere equally shitty or shittier

Stick, because I'm not convinced there is a single thing I was born to do. Rather, I've come to the view that there are a few criteria I've got to fulfil - interesting problem-solving work, not repetitive or too precise, some but relatively small degree of human contact, not playing on subjective human inscrutability, high degree of autonomy - and if I can tick those boxes, the type of work doesn't actually matter very much. Oh, and some visible future to aim towards.

Right now I'm lucky to have most of those. It's also starting to pay pretty well - not to be derided as an aim I now realise, it takes the stress away a lot. All in all, that adds up to 'stick'.

Then again, it'd been a tough few years until recently. A year ago I couldn't see a future, was struggling on human contact, and was buffeted by human inscrutability. Then it'd've been 'twist' for sure - probably back to my old job that I quit to try and make a go of this. Tough times.

(I assume you're asking solely about professional fulfilment. So I've put everything aside that my career has led to and that makes the answer an automatic 'stick' - family, where I live, how I live, etc.)

But rly it may be sad that even for thread purposes id rather get a useful programming qualification than the dream of english or journalism or w/e

Why would this be sad?

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/c/caravan/album-if-i-could-do-it-all-over-again-id-do-it-all-over-you.jpg

There's a weird sort of acceptance and support you get from people if you are obliged to behave weirdly because it's your job that I don't know can be replicated with financial independence, so I guess I'd like the sort of job where all kinds of nonsense would be excused because I'm paid to do it, and this is putting me dangerously close to guy fieri territory.

Xp. Cos what kind of a dreeeeeam is that, maaannnn. Also because its prob not even where any talents or preferences i have lie, its just i know dudes in that gig and they make srs bank

anyway my dream job that is semi-realistic (i.e. not becoming a racecar driver) would be to become a cinematographer

xp See, I really struggle with that. I can't do contentious negotiation at all, because it feels so weird to be taking this unreasonable partisan position when I know there's no way it's the objective truth. Being the ridiculous guy is so cringeworthy.

re: racecar driver, aren't there tracks that let you pay to play?
re: contentious negotiation, if it's your job then at least people don't think you're actually crazy.

well i'd want to be a rally car driver specifically. there are amateur rallies it's true

i've always wanted to ride along on a rally, they look like so much fun

I wish my dad hadn't tried so hard keep me off the factory floor. He learned the kind of skills there that I could turn into dollars.

Retail is great for losers.

So, stay in school, finish my art degree, pump my old man for training and tool knowledge,work in a trade of some kind, make awesome shit for people willing to pay in my spare time.

vs

take that job at the discount chain drugstore.

Cos what kind of a dreeeeeam is that, maaannnn. Also because its prob not even where any talents or preferences i have lie, its just i know dudes in that gig and they make srs bank

Sounds like a stable, well-adjusted life without regrets?

Tbh, I think I sometimes romanticize programming the way other people probably romanticize playing guitar or composing.

Tough one. I'm generally very happy teaching elementary, but I should have stuck with math past high school, and maybe I'd be teaching that at the high school level. Or something else math-related--teaching itself came about as a last resort when I was 30.

Similarly, if I were to do it all over again and still do music, I'd definitely approach it in a more pragmatic way from early on.

people romaticize programming because programming jobs exist not cause it's cool

No, that's not completely true!

The rigorous rule-governed logic of it seems really awesome.

that aspect is probably better explored as a hobby than as a profession

for some reason everyone wants to hire ninjas and rockstars, not logicians.

After college I painted houses. I worked as a freelance ad copywriter. I worked in a place that sold machine tools. I was a house daddy and a nurse to my handicapped daughter.

I came close to having a real career once. I went back to school and became a technical writer for a high tech company. I quit that job after about 10 years and I didn't work at all for a couple of years after that. I just hiked a lot and did whatever else needed done. Then I drove a school bus for five years.

This 'career path' is what my life, health and sanity required. I'm OK with all of it. I'm not destitute. I own a 20 year old car and I wear my clothes and shoes until they are pretty worn out, though. But I can buy necessities and never have to wonder how to pay for them. That just makes good sense to me.

^^ should be cut & pasted to the people who have figured out how to live thread i think

still a student, only regret is i didn't pursue this field of study earlier. but yknow life happens, it's a journey blah blah.

Nowadays programming jobs are contracted overseas and shit, fwiu. it's the developer/engineering jobs that are in demand.

Currently earning minor ducats working the fruit & veg section of a supermarket. I don't actually dislike it but obv there are a hundred better more fulfilling jobs out there. Really though it's having to work for a living in the 1st place that I don't like. My ideal job is retirement.

people romaticize programming because programming jobs exist not cause it's cool

fwiw I started messing abt w/programming as a kid because I romanticised the magic of ~making stuff happen onscreen~ (sadly I didn't know anyone else interested in it or I might have noticed my lack of the natural talent or work ethic required), and at that pre-internet-boom age when I told people this career plan they had no opinions on it whatsoever, just "that's nice/unusual, dear"

the dot-com boom started a year or two before I went to university and I began to get "oh, there's a lot of money in that" instead and felt... dirty, like, that's not the point

if it is reassuring to anyone I do not "make srs bank", mostly because I am not very good at it but also (I like to tell myself) because making srs bank at it tends to involve working a lot more hours than I would like to

(it also helps to be male and preferably fresh out of university because then employers are more readily convinced that you will have no qualms abt working until 10pm every night if they give you free beanbags, tell you you are the ninja rock star of TPS reports, and convince you there is some intense Enid Blyton / Hardy Boys smart kids solving mysteries the world doesn't understand ganghood to your office of early 20s dudes who like money, beanbags and this shallow pandering to lonely childhood fantasies more than they like going home in the evenings)

anyway... back to bees. bees are p. awesome it's true

ok, sorry, I regret posting that because this is not the "why other people's imaginary dream careers are actually not awesome" thread, and if I had posted about my now-faded musical delusions I would have been annoyed to read that it's hard to make a living out there and involves lots of things I don't like (though it surely is and does)

please ignore my post, indulge your fantasies and have a nice day, folks

Thinking about it, I was probably being disingenuous: if money and security were non-issues, I'd be more than happy to get my rule-governed logic from Bach chorales and Max patches. I only ever (mostly idly) thought about programming as something I could do f/t after I saw a friend (with a composition background) making srs bank at it. I think I mostly decided that it's not for me, in any case.

Actually, I guess that when I think about this question, I approach it from the opposite perspective as the OP. I did follow my bliss, practically to the point of absurdity.

difficult question. i wanted to be a journalist growing up, from a very young age, then wanted to be a music journalist, but the reality of both wasn't really as i hoped, and i think actually having a dream growing up isn't always helpful if you change a lot from the age of 18-25 or whatever.

my current career is still in that field i guess, it pays well and it allows me to do other things, doing this drama diploma lately and i sometimes think i would like to go back to being 18 and give that a go, but i don't know if i'd be at more of an advantage and it seems a futile exercise to wonder.

i am sometimes envious of the bulletproof attitude of some of my younger classmates who are all just throwing everything at making it as an actor - tho the other half of me is glad i'm doing it with a massive safety net.

the same safety net that makes it easy not to go for it as much as i should!

overall tho i wouldn't change much, maybe do a diff college course, like dmac i often think english in trinity would have been good, i didn't enjoy my course or basically any learning until this drama diploma, it's the first time i've ever listened to a teacher 100 per cent and not found fault.

possibly cos i paid for it myself.

rather than the state doing so.

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