From: dennis@alexia.lis.uiuc.edu (Thomas A. Dennis)
Subject: Re: What do you want to do with your life
Organization: University of Illinois at Urbana
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 02:52:51 GMT

In <BvEIH8.900@nic.umass.edu> EDIAS@deimos.ucc.umass.edu (EMILIANO A DIAS) 
writes:

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

That was begging the question, in my case...

>When I was young I used to get asked this question A LOT.

I used to get asked, "When are you going to get a life, Tom?", in various
thinly-veiled and not-so-thinly-veiled forms.

>I used to reply, I wanna be: an electrical engineer, a computer engineer,
>a math teacher, I don't care I just want to be happy,... 
>(the reply depended upon how old I was when I was asked the question.

>Now that I've grown up, I have NO idea what I want to be/do.

Count your blessings... sometimes the answer is, "I want to be a librarian."
Not exactly the most romantic quest in existence...

>I look at people who have specific interests (i.e. political aspirations,
>the desire to teach, the need to write, etc) and I'm jealous because
>I don't seem to have any "higher purpose", no goal that I'm working hard
>to acheive.

Yeah, I used to be jealous of those people, especially the early bloomers.
Even after I found out that many of them were using the mask of "higher
purpose" to cover for the fact that someone else had made the decision for
them, or that it had seemed to be the easiest way to make a buck at the
time, I always used to say, "If only I had a goal in life...", or, when I
DID have a goal, "if only I had thought of it sooner..."

>All I seem to do is try to enjoy myself right now (in the present).

>Frighteningly, most of my friends seem to be like this also.

To use a worn-out cliche... maybe you and your friends should try to "find 
yourselves", or in less jaded parlance, work on making your life an express-
ion of yourself, rather than what others are easily impressed by.  Try not to
laugh in my face, but--my quest is the quest for the quintessential Tomness
of my existence.  Even if I end up as a cross-dressing lumberjack.... or a
librarian.

>It's like living in the book "Generation X" (great angst-filled book btw,
>by Douglas Copeland)

Well, yes, it is an angst-filled book... but not so great, IMHO.  Too many
cynical Sniglets in the margins, that Copeland seems to feel are much more
clever than they actually are.  I have yet to meet someone that actually uses
them in conversation, nor do I especially want to.

>I would really like to someday wake up and think, "Hey I know what I want 
>to do!"  and have it be something so great to me that I'll work incredibly
>hard to acheive (or at least want to work hard)

Keep in mind that it may not seem to be so great to someone else... in
fact, they might think you're nuts.  But, as long as it helps you to
become more Tony-like, who gives a flying fuck, right?

>Maybe that's the problem in my life:  I've never had to work hard to get
>anything or to understand anything.  Anytime I've had to work hard for
>something I've deemed that something undesirable and given up trying to
>"get" it.

Don't worry... when you find out what you REALLY want, you will work your ass
off for it.

>     loafing around with no purpose...         Tony Dias

        Running like mad on the gerbil exercise wheel of library school,

--

Tom Dennis                    |  I looked into the abyss,
dennis@alexia.uiuc.edu        |    and the abyss looked into me--
tadg0614@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu     |      and we both winked.
Newsgroups: alt.angst