with Britt Reints
Forget the 9 to 5; Full Time, All the Time is a blog about the mobile working life - when you have the freedom to work from anywhere and the responsibility of always having your smartphone turned on. Britt Reints works as a freelance writer while traveling fulltime in an RV with her husband and two kids. She explores balancing real-life bills with an unconventional work life, and finding time to maintain relationships with family and friends.
You can also find Britt at InPursuitOfHappiness.net.
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I know a handful of women who wanted to be mothers when they grew up.
Not me.
While I love being a mother now, I didn’t spend my childhood and teenage years dressing up in sweatpants and nursing bras pretending to change diapers. Of course, I also didn’t fantasize about writing marketing emails or making killer sales calls - so there’s that.
No, my career fantasies were much more glamorous. It’s been interesting to revisit these dreams over the last few weeks and remember how badly I wanted to be certain things.
Fashion Designer
I spent a few years carrying around a sketch pad. I would draw women with no heads, hands or feet, wearing beautiful dresses decorated with colored pencil patterns. I remember being particularly obsessed with full skirts, which would come as no surprise to anyone who took a peek inside my adult closet.
I don’t remember when or why this dream faded, but watching Project Runway now suggests that it might have had something to do with my inability to sew. Apparently real fashion designers have to actually make clothes.
Defense Attorney
I fell in love with the idea of being a lawyer at a very young age. Being a defense attorney fit my justice complex well. I wanted life to be fair, and I was determined to do my part to make it so. I liked the idea of standing up for someone who had been wronged and making sure that rights were protected.
As an adult, I’m constantly reminding myself that life is not fair. As a mother, I’m constantly saying those exact words to my children. Hello, Irony.
ACLU Attorney
My junior year of high school, I attended a “young leaders” law conference in Washington DC. We did a mock trial centered around constitutional law. Thanks, in large part, to my closing argument, my “side” won. We discovered later that we were arguing a real case - and that in real life the other “side” had won. I was hooked. I fell madly in love with the Consitution and the intricacies of civil rights.
Come to find out, you have to graduate college and go to law school to practice any kind of law. But I bet you can guess the way I vote as an adult. (Insert disclaimer about the political leanings of bloggers not representing the opinions of the Work It Mom owners or staff members.)
It’s funny, now, to think about what we wanted so desperately as children. Youth is so certain.
But while I didn’t grow up to be exactly what I thought, I can still see remenants of those passions in my day to day life.
What did you want to be when you grew up?
Photo courtesy of edenpictures on Flickr.
I usually wanted to be a teacher or nurse. At 16 I entered the education program at university, thinking I’d become the world’s most innovative, effective, groundbreaking teacher and wipe out literacy problems. At 19 I decided the public school system wasn’t likely to foster the innovations of an un-tenured classroom teacher, and I’d be able to make more of a difference if I earned some bucks and became an entrepreneurial education innovator. So I switched to a sort of “pre-law” major and the rest is history. Law, MBA, CPA, jobs and business ventures that have little or nothing to do with teaching or nursing.
25 years ago, I never would have believed I’d end up in a specialized tax field.
SKL | September 30th, 2009 at 7:48 am
Let’s see: Actress, model, lawyer, veterinarian, interior designer, poet, writer, photographer, independently wealthy…
Finn | September 30th, 2009 at 8:59 am
I could see you as any of those. Plus, one of the hosts of any of those clothes makeover shows. You’d rock as one of those!
I wanted to work for the CIA.
Avitable | September 30th, 2009 at 9:46 am
When I was really little, I wanted to have a pet store. Then, I wanted to manage a sports and recreation facility. Then I wanted to be an attorney and politician. In late high school and early college, I wanted to work in business, preferably in healthcare, because I wanted what I felt was my skill set to be used in a career field that mattered. At the end of college, I decided again to go to law school, but still planned to use it for running a hospital or something. While in school, I found I enjoyed litigation and working with individuals who were getting screwed. And so, here I am.
Deep down, however, I’ll always be a dancer.
muskrat | September 30th, 2009 at 10:26 am
oh how i wanted to be a teacher. english, science…it wouldn’t have mattered so long as i was teaching.
hello haha narf | September 30th, 2009 at 11:54 am
Writer. I wrote an awful story at age 16 about a group of artsy university friends in which I was thinly disguised as the bookish sensitive writer among a crowd of boisterous actors and singers, which were dreams #2 and #3. It took me 20 years to remember that and start again from where I left off.
Karen Murphy | September 30th, 2009 at 4:26 pm
First, a palentologist. But then I realized I’d have to stay out in the hot sun and be dirty.
Then I wanted to be a model, but by age 13 I already had serious curves (at age 14 I had Marilyn Monroe’s exact measurements but the model ideal was Kate Moss).
Next up, the ever popular singer. I actually make some money at this now (weddings, funerals, special events) but of course, likely never would have made megastardom.
In jr high, as a bussed kid, I spent most lunch hours in the library (with the other bussed kids). And in high school I went at least once a week, in elementary school at least twice a month but never considered it as a career. So, of course, that is what I do.
Mich | October 1st, 2009 at 11:14 am
When my friends were playing with baby dolls, I was playing Charlie’s Angels and being Bree, shopping for sexy/cool outfits out of the Sears Catalog. I never had the baby bug and only got pregnant to try to save my marriage. It’s true. Thing is having Lauren was one of the best things ever to happen for me. I wasn’t the best at mothering her when she was really little, but once she started to talk it got better and better. Now’s she’s 8 and I love being a mom.
When I was a kid, I wanted to be a writer. And I am, for a living and a hobby–through my blog and through my short stories and poetry I write and publish (although getting paid in copies doesn’t buy me a Starbucks). I also thought I’d be a vet and actually started college as a pre-vet major, then learned I am allergic to everything with fur and there’s a lot of science involved with being a vet. Instead, I get to be a pet owner. I also wanted to be a ballerina and did ballet for 22 years, now am a salsa dancer.
Now, I want to figure out what I want to do with the rest of my life, which is not what I’m doing now working in PR. I know it’s something creative that lets me be my own boss, but what exactly I don’t know. If only I could EAT copies of journals and pay my mortgage with them, then I’d be a professional poet. But alas, BOA doesn’t like freeform confessional poems.
lynn @ human, being | October 1st, 2009 at 6:43 pm
My mom said when I was 5, I wanted to be a boxer - which earned me the nickname “Bruiser McStroud” for a short while.
After that it was always science related…nurse, dr, forensics. I eventually settled on Medical Technologist and work in a molecular diagnostic lab (genetics).
After I have my second baby, I want to learn to box - just for fun!
Jennifer | October 3rd, 2009 at 9:01 pm