Things I Wanted to Be
by Katherine—Age 29—New York City
The embarrassing, complete list:
Kindergarten:
Great artist. Great philosopher. Write treatises about things. Composer (later realized do not comprehend music)
Second grade:
Scientist, like Louis Pasteur or Marie Curie (classroom had book nook with career series); Margaret Mead (did not totally understand what she’d done, but liked her style as represented in book-nook career books); chicken farmer (eggs not meat, of course); paleontologist; designer of fountains
Fourth grade:
Conceptual artist; director of music videos; choreographer (am inspired by Paula Abdul videos watched at friend’s house); makeup artist; interior decorator; inventor (save world with clean energy from perpetual motion. Invent flying machine); architect
Seventh grade:
Movie director; writer (with a bullet! Possibilities included: Virginia Woolf, eminent playwright, publish memoirs and become instantly famous, Sylvia Plath. Victor Hugo, for some reason); shaman-esque figure; successful child actress; manufacturer, with friend Ellie, of line of natural cosmetics
Ninth grade:
Creative writing teacher; visionary administrator of new, perfect school; rock star, or famous punk-rock muse; itinerant music journalist like Cameron Crowe; playwright; coffee shop or art-house movie theater owner; work at Sassy magazine; Stewart Brand; vintage clothing finder/buyer
Rest of high school:
Set designer; travel writer; science writer; film critic; founder and editor in chief of magazine; photographer, preferably for National Geographic; writer of experimental fiction; combiner of photography and experimental fiction; EIC of The New Yorker (snert)
College:
Field anthropologist; professional academic feminist; landlord; buyer and renovator of old houses; self-sufficient hippie (geodesic dome, garden, animals, boyfriend); endless bohemian; famous literary critic; New Yorker staff writer; glam, long-format journalist; producer, ‘This American Life’; PA on films; maker of documentaries; long-haul trucker; endocrinologist; college professor (w/ reservations); building caretaker; writer of polemical books about what’s wrong with society and why; fire lookout on remote mountain, á la Jack Kerouac in Dharma Bums; seller of things on eBay, fuck everything
Postcollege:
Most of the above, plus: hospital bioethics board (for a month, right after graduation); doctor (for a week, same time period); editor of book review section at a magazine; therapist; science writer; mother, all of a sudden
Things I never wanted to be:
President, kindergarten teacher, elected office of any kind, crime scene investigator, lawyer (okay, maybe for a few minutes), middle manager, anything at a Fortune 500 Company, ever; statistician, news reporter, topologist, school psychologist, professional chef
(Image: Justin Cormack)
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