Is your current job the type of job you've always wanted to do in life?

Yes. I am a writer and editor working from home.

I am enjoying my new part time job, but it isn’t what I wanted to be doing at this stage of my life, no.

I think so. I’m a teacher and also in grad school. I programmed the future and this is what I wanted to do since the age of 17. I’m pretty sick of the school side of things though.

GQ. The job I’m doing today—and plan to be retiring from soon—is the culmination of everything I’ve learned and done over the course of a long career, which was as a writer and creative director in advertising and marketing positions. What I’m doing today (and have been doing for several years) is manage a small creative team in a medium-sized corporation, and that’s mainly all I do: manage people and kick-start new creative projects. This corporate-level position pays pretty well and has a certain amount of prestige, and it has its fulfilling moments from time to time—but definitely not fulfilling in the ways my creative work in the past provided.

When I was a child, I wanted to be a doctor, like Doogie Howser.
Then I wanted to be a novelist. Then I thought “let’s be realistic, here” and said “Journalist”.
Then I realised what journalism has become and said “Yeah, let’s just write novels, then, and I’ll teach English in the meanwhile”
And then I found religion and all I wanted was an Mrs. Degree. Which was fine because my parents forbade my college aspirations.
And now I’ve given that religion thing up, and would like to write and possibly be an EMT, and also a caterer, and maybe an event planner.

In short, I have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. But since I have no immediate plans to grow up, that’s not bothering me too much.

It is not what I always wanted to do, but it’s adequate. I didn’t know what I wanted to do when I was at an age when I should have been making real decisions and taking action. I didn’t realize my love of history could be turned into a career until it was too late to do anything about it. I was a musician/actor/model, which I loved and I still do both, but always had a clerical “day job” because I’m good at it and music/acting/modeling aren’t the most reliable sources of income. My Mom insisted I learn how to type when I was younger because “you can always fall back on that.” Unfortunately, you can also fall forward into it, so to speak, and get stuck if you don’t realize where your true interests lie.

I ended up becoming a paralegal purely by happenstance when I was between day jobs and a fellow musician told me his wife was quitting her job and suggested I go talk to her. She had me come right over and I was hired on the spot. It turned out I had a real knack for it and it paid so well that I continued doing it. I didn’t stop until I got married and didn’t need to make as much money. While I was married I was able to really pursue acting and television work full-time, even doing a show about local history (which is the closest I’ve come to ever having my dream job) but when I got divorced and was a single parent to two children, I immediately went back to legal work because I needed to make as much money as possible to support them and there I remain.

I still play music and act. It’s interesting that after all these years my legal work and artistic lives have finally collided. I landed my current job (paralegal at a boutique entertainment firm) seven months ago. In this job I meet all sorts of famous (and not so famous, but equally talented and important) musicians, actors, producers, directors, you-name-it, etc. and I have more creative opportunities than I’ve had in years. In a way, I’ve come full circle. I get to be a musician/actor and a paralegal at the same time (and I get to dress like it, which is one of the many things I love about this highly atypical law firm)

All that being said, if I could do it all over again, I’d have gotten a history degree and work as a museum curator or as a history researcher/preservationist. That’s the dream job. My advice to you is not to let what you are doing to support yourself keep you from trying to do what you really dream of, because if you don’t act decisively when you are younger, life has a way of forcing you to defer it, possibly forever.

Nope, I wanted to be a pro footballer or a stuntman, despite showing considerable skill in both fields, I just failed to make the grade.
Still, never mind, i’m bloody good at what I do & it pays the bills…so.

My current job is an off-shoot of what I wanted to do, which was something I’d thought about but completely fell into by luck.

I write trading rules for a stock options trading exchange. We’re a derivative of a stock exchange.

When I was in college I would read novels of traders in Switzerland and Chicago and think that would be a nice way of making a living. Then when I got out of school and was looking for a job, I answered a want ad for an entry level position at the Stock Exchange. I was hired to stand in a trading crowd putting prices into a special computer while people yelled at me.

I worked my way up to where I was running a trading pit with 50 or so traders yelling all day long in front of me (and me yelling back). Eventually I made it into Management. After a few takeovers, I work on business development for a trading floor and make sure the rules are set the way we want them.

I believed them when they said, ‘if you do what you love, you’ll never work another day in your life’. Liars! Twice, I turned my avocation into my vocation. I made enough money to pay the bills, but I didn’t have an interest for the business management side to create a thriving business beyond having a couple of employees. Nor was I interested in carrying sufficient debt to hire a business manager. I came to the conclusion that I’m not the entrepreneurial type, and I’m OK with that.

Being employed by someone else at a job that is reasonably employee friendly is working for me, and allows me to pursue my current avocation at my leisure, with no commercial interests.

The job that I have now is not my life’s dream nor do I enjoy it. It’s something to do to pay the bills until I can figure out what I really would like to do with my life. Recently I had a thought. Maybe I’m not supposed to be interested in spending thousands of dollars to get an education to work for someone else at a job that has no meaning for me. Maybe, no matter what job I get it will always be the job I have to allow me a paycheck to do the things I really find important, like spending free time with hubby, buying my cats the newest cat condo, family vacations or decorating my home with beautiful meaningful things that bring me joy to be surrounded by. Like @bossob said, I’m not interested in making my hobbies into a job because as soon as I HAVE to do it, it ceases to be enjoyable. So, I will continue to work at jobs I don’t like because the real excitement to me will always be the ability to leave it and be able to afford what really makes me happy.

My job is pretty satisfying. I have a lot of independence and get to choose my projects, in exchange for having to do a bit of scutwork.

No. In fact, in high school, I was completely adamant that I did NOT want to be an educator. I wanted to stay far, far away from teaching. Standing in front of a class? Talking for hours? Grading? Yuck. It was not what I wanted to do at all. I was dead-set on becoming a writer or editor after finishing college.

I enjoy what I am doing. I miss writing. I haven’t had a creative spark in quite some time now, and it saddens and troubles me. But I feel confident in my ability to lead a classroom and help students improve. I might go for my PhD and teach at the college-level, but I am intimidated by it and still question whether that will make me truly happy in the long run.

This and all of my jobs except for my high school job working in a dairy store are what I wanted to do.

I had two fascinations when I was a kid, electronics and ships. Of course I joined the Navy then when I got tired of ships I worked with satellite navigation and now I work with industrial control systems. It’s all great fun!

Right now I’m sailing in the Caribbean. Every once in a while, I will sail somebody else’s vessel from the point of purchase to wherever the buyer wishes it to go. That’s a dream gig for me. The last one was from Aruba to Galveston. Good work, if you can get it. Most of the time I work as a nurse, but that’s getting old. I used to enjoy medical research, but the hours and paperwork is getting to be too much. I loved disaster work, but on a post-earthquake DMAT in Haiti I had a heart attack and now no agency will touch me. I’m thinking about taking a course in horticulture. I could see ending my days working in a greenhouse somewhere, maybe the Horticulture Therapy Institute, or those fantastic gardens at San Simeon or Asheville. And fruit trees would be interesting. Or finishing my post graduate work in art history. I fantasize about identifying forgeries of the impressionists and post impressionists for museums and insurance companies. I’m sure curators would just love to see me coming through the door. Just the fake Van Gogh’s alone could keep me in work for the rest of my life. Who knows. The probability is that I’ll die at sea right here at the helm. And that is just fine.

Indeed it is.

It was yes.
Operative word “was.”
The work I loved the most was interior design & staging work but being a luxury biz. the bottom has completely dropped out the last few years in surrounding areas.
Peoples budget is about $800…well, that will get you a few new throw pillows and a wall painted, maybe an area rug. haha

I am sadly, and kicking and screaming all the way, faced with taking new employment in fields I am not at all enthusiastic about. I am having a hard time with digressing from my joyful peak that has now peaked out. lol

Grrr!

No, but each crappy job taught me invaluable lessons.They also helped shape my personality. Now I am sure of what I want to do, it is a calling.

I’ve always wanted to be a doctor until I didn’t anymore. Then I worked as a public health professional but got sick of a lot of injustice in people’s lives. So I went back to school, where I feel safer. I teach college which is I guess what I’ve always done when I thought I wanted to do other things. But now I know it’s one of the things I want to be doing later on, as a full professor. It’s not all I want to be doing but something to do with higher education and activism, for sure. I’ll be in graduate school for some more years, though.

Yes, I’ve pretty much always been able to work at jobs doing what I liked. Sometimes the people I worked for were not a good match, so I didn’t stay long.

I have been a homemaker and grandmother for over 25 years now, and I’m loving it.

I wanted to be a rock star. Came that short of reaching my goal. The only thing that hindered me was I didn’t play a guitar, couldn’t sing and had no talent.

Wound up being goaded into submitting an application for a promotion 11 years ago. Got the promotion, so I moved from the mail room to a desk with a position I knew nothing about and had no interest in.

The next year and a half was pure hell trying to master my job while covering the fact I didn’t have a clue.

Today, I’m one of a handful of employees left who actually know and understand my position. I’ve been mentoring for the last 2 years and I’m currently preparing lesson plans for refresher training. I’m scheduled to teach (1st time) the next scheduled class…

…if I don’t get selected for promotion to a position I was goaded into submitting an application for.

But there’s still hope! I play pretty good air guitar and I lip sync as good now as I did in my teens.

Who said an old geezer can’t rock?!

I did want to be an Astronaut, (Pilot first), *Doctor, Lawyer and Engineer.I’m colour-blind/poor vision and not nearly smart enough for those types of degrees/training.

Alas, my poor Jewish parents didn’t get their Doctor and had to settle for a son who’s a simple farmer. And not a particularly successful one at that.

@zensky You make a fine starship Captain though. Well done, sir!

If I were the Captain… alas, I barely drive a tractor.

In a strange way, yes, kind of. I can’t work for real, and if I just was at home by myself all day I’d probably do something to myself. I found a way to volunteer at the RedCross twice a week and it helps keep me alive. I get out of our house two days a week and get to help other people while not being made to feel like an idiot.

@zensky there is great honor in working with the earth!

But my current occupation is one I’ve been on a quest for a long time—I’m retired!