I Do Not Dream of Labor

"What do you want to be when you grow up?"

Sep 21, 2024

“What do you want to be when you grow up?”

The question was posed more than a few times throughout childhood. I remember one of the first times was when I was in preschool. I was four years old and was sitting on a slightly crusty carpet with a dozen other four-year-olds in a stone church, though the preschool wasn’t exactly religiously configured aside from the name, Noah’s Little Arc.

I wasn’t paying much attention as the teacher or woman in charge that I likely thought was much older than she was asked us all, “What do you want to be when you grow up.”

She was talking about a job, of course.

One by one, around the carpet, tiny four-year-olds answered. I think there were some answers like “teacher” or “dancer.” The closer it was getting to me to answer, I felt like I was at a complete loss. I didn’t talk much as it was, but I had no idea how to answer this one-word question.

It was the girl’s turn next to me. “I want to be a dentist.”

A dentist?

It was my turn.

I froze, looking around as some other kids looked back at me. Some of them looked anywhere else from the crafts hung on the walls to feet where it appeared at some point, they lost their shoes.

“Dentist,” I repeated what the girl next to me had said, even though it couldn’t have been further from the truth. Dentist? I hated the dentist. Both my brother and I had been cursed already with terrible teeth since toddlerhood and I couldn’t imagine wanting to go to the dentist ever again let alone become one.

But, the teacher moved along, asking the next child in the room and then the next. My answer slowly evaporated until the next time I was asked in elementary school as a kindergartener where again, I didn’t know of a good answer.

“Gymnastics teacher,” I think I said once, having to draw a picture with purple and green crayons to go with it.

In third grade, I still wasn’t giving the kind of good answers that some of the other kids were sharing with thoughtful trajectories of, “Doctor” or “Teacher” or event “Scientist.”

At one point, even though I never acted a day in my life, I declared I wanted to be an actress which went over as well as one could expect. But, it was never a big deal. Not knowing what you wanted to do with your life as a child should be expected, right? Though, once I got to high school, people were starting to look for an answer.

And my heart pounded in my chest every time I had to think about it because the questions were getting more serious. They were getting deeper.

“Are you going to college?”

“Yes.”

“Where are you going? What are you majoring in?”

At least, I figured, I had an answer for that even if it wasn’t a good one. While others were planning their higher education around the future career they hoped to pursue in medicine or STEM, I planned mine around the subject I hated the least. Because I liked writing (when it wasn’t assigned). I liked books (even if they weren’t the kind of books classic professors would assign or even consider real literature). “I’m studying English.”

“Oh.” They’d often pause. “Are you going to become a teacher?”

I shook my head. “No.”

“Huh. Then what are you going to do with that?”

I... didn’t know. I often stumbled for a true answer to that question.

But it’s odd. The older you get, the more you are in the workforce, and the less people ask, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Because, I guess, you are already supposed to know. You are already supposed to be doing it.

I sort of envy the people who always had an answer to that question. One day, at the age of four or eight or even twenty, decided that they were going to go after a certain job or career and did and were happy to do so. I envy the people who go to work and don’t dread every minute leading up to their commute and every minute after it gets dark out in the evening again since it means another minute closer to their next shift. I wonder what it’s like.

I will likely never know, unfortunately. I still don’t have an answer if someone walked up to me and asked that question, at least not one that wouldn’t come with caveats.

What do I want to be?

I want to be a writer. I want to be an author of my books and spend my days creating them.

But, much to my dismay, that isn’t an acceptable answer. Not to most people, anyway. And honestly, currently, not completely even to myself. Not when you can’t do it full-time.

When you can’t write full-time and support yourself, it isn’t called a job or a career. It’s called a hobby. It’s called a dream. A hope or misguided notion to those drawn to “the arts.” So for years since I was a child being asked what I wanted to do or what my dream job was, I can never answer fully honestly. I cannot only say writing.

My dream is to write full-time, but my day job is working... At a library because it seemed good for a person who liked books, much like working in publishing. At a school teaching because the hours were good when the kids didn’t fully exhaust me and the expectations of work during daylight hours were clear. At a yoga studio as an instructor perhaps, because I like the movement already and think I’d be good at it, but still, this one is pushing it for fear that I’m misguided on how it could comfortably pay the bills.

I’ve come up with a lot of answers over the years, varied and spanning the spectrum of reality and education, making writing almost feel a little more than it should, yet also hoping that one day it will come and save me.

It almost feels like a dirty little lie.

But as of now, I will admit it. I’m sorry. I do not dream of labor.

I dream of life. The question just is... Is that acceptable?