What’s your dream career? I don’t mean the job you’d love to do, the one that ‘wouldn’t feel like work’. I mean the one you fantasise about, the one you think must be fairytale bliss. (Mine is probably chocolate taster, because omg so. much. chocolate!

For a lot of people, it’s being a princess, or a writer, or a sailor. I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week because my writing list has covered Pest Control Services and Tombstone Carvers … Also, I’ve been reading about maritime disasters, watching Royals, and Pirates of the Caribbean.

A lot of the clients I write for are family businesses in the first world. So while us guys grow up wanting to be doctors or lawyers or socialites, there’s a guy somewhere in the bundus of UK who woke up one day and said, ‘You know what, Wife? We’re going to kill bugs. And people are going to pay us to do it.’ And they did. For 50 years and counting. And all their nieces and nephews and kids and grandkids are part of the family business.

These kids did not tell their guidance counselors that they want to be policemen when they grew up. Nope. Their career path was clear from day one. Their folks and grandfolks had made millions (?) killing insects and it was their duty to continue with the business. They didn’t really have a choice.

For some people, this is a blessing. They find comfort knowing their path is charted out, that they have a job waiting, that they don’t have to struggle to discover what they want to do when they grow up. They just go to school and study something relevant to the family firm. Like … I don’t know … a degree in radioactive roach control.

For others, this feels like a trap. They are free spirits and would rather be lost and uncertain on their own life journeys than have a destination chosen for them. They’d rather flit from job to job until they find one that fits. A similar line of thinking came up in the royals documentary.

Some street-side interviewees said they felt sad for modern royals. Their whole lives are designed, what school they go to, what charity they support, what family they can marry. Especially the first borns, the crown heirs. The crown spares are even more trapped, because their whole lives are basically waiting for siblings to die so they can be a just-in-case monarch.

Other people thought this was the best way to live! Be rich, don’t pay bills, attend fancy events, then die and be buried in fancy clothes. The cost? Don’t fall in love with the wrong person, and try not to be photographed doing anything stupid. I suppose your views on this spectrum are driven by your personality, what you believe in, the kind of person that you are. Neither opinion is right or wrong. They’re just … different.

Unrelated: how the fuck did we ever communicate before gifs?!?!

Back to the point, I’m a writer by profession, and my current target for 2025 is a container house on the shores of Lake Elementaita (where a friend currently owns a resort full of forest cabins and is trying to convince me that cabin beats container). So yeah, lying in a hammock, staring at flamingoes, and typing on my laptop is a very real possibility by the time I’m 43. #KnockCabin

Except … that’s not really what my daily life is like. Yes, I work in my pyjamas and write for a living, and I generally enjoy it. But it’s not the romantic notion of scribbling words under a tree. Most days, I’m on my bed or at my writing desk, sitting until my ass hurts, chasing panic-inducing deadlines as I write SEO articles about marble tiles and Japanese blenders. Up-side, it pays well, I nap a lot, and I get to use all the puns I want woohoo! #PunsAreFun

Sometimes I think other jobs must be way more exciting. Like being a sailor or a hunter or a chef. But the truth is – as much as we romanticise that shit, they’re all just jobs. Hunters still have to skin animals and clean smelly intestines. Sailors spend a lot of time in nasty weather smelling like fish. And some people earn their millions killing bugs. What’s my point? I have no idea. I was just thinking about it so I wrote about it. Sorry. Here, have a gif.

♫ How you remind me ♫ nickelback ♫

136 thoughts on “Romancing the story”

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