What Do You Want to Be When You Grow Up?
My answers to this question throughout my lifetime have included: detective, lawyer, teacher, waitress, marine biologist, writer, pastry chef, journalist, singer, actor, travel blogger, librarian, stage manager, teaching artist, education director.
My first paying job at an organization or company of any kind was working in the box office at a regional theatre when I was in high school in the summer of 2005. I immediately loved working in and around theatre. I pursued all sorts of acting classes and productions throughout high school, but working in the box office was the first time I was getting paid to be a part of this art form I loved. From then on, I was all in. The details of my “dream job” in theatre evolved over time, and after college, I settled into the theatre education space, specifically in theatre for young audiences and community arts education. I then pursued and attained an advanced degree in this field, where I really hit my stride. I was awarded a top honor for graduate students in the field named for a creative drama legend. I created and researched a thesis project I was immensely proud of. I got a job post-graduation, and then just one job later landed in the role I had worked for: leading an education department at a theatre organization. I was lucky to experience a linear and efficient path to the leadership role I sought.
Even with the ease and clarity afforded by this linear pathway, as I developed my artistic, educational and programmatic skills, a very nonlinear development was taking place underneath this progression. Knowingly and unknowingly, my identity twisted and coiled more and more intricately with the work I was doing. Theatre, education, working with youth - all of these “passion jobs” - made it so easy to give more and more of myself, and to equate my identity with the work that I did. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the years that followed only wrapped this coil of work and self tighter. I designed and facilitated drama classes online, even directing a full production with teens on Zoom. From the need to innovate, the pressure to keep revenue coming in the doors, the need to support children and youth during an isolating time, the cognitive dissonance of putting theatre programming ON THE INTERNET followed by the ever-evolving safety policies and procedures with the return to in person programming, I took it all on.
And then, at the end of last year, 17 years after that first summer box office job, I stopped working in theatre. I left the theatre education dream job that I had worked my whole professional career to get. I was in too deep. I had given too much of myself away.
The burnout was almost a blessing. While I don’t condone the structures that facilitate the burnout of countless creative nonprofit professionals such as myself, I needed to need to leave in order to make such a monumental change. The desperation of how much I needed my work life to change was the push I needed to accept the new job offer and resign from my position. Stepping away from this work made me feel like I was also stepping away from myself. Leaving arts education felt like I was abandoning my purpose. Navigating this change has been confusing, frustrating, messy. It’s felt a lot like trying to untangle necklaces that have become knotted together over time: How can I leave everything I worked for? Everything I built? Who am I without the work I’ve been doing my whole life? How do I separate myself from my work?
This last question is my clue that the root issue is not really about whether or not I want to work in arts education. The thing I need to heal here is my relationship to work.
I am no longer on the same linear path I had previously followed. Instead I am forging a new one, paving the way with each new question that comes up: How do I want to spend my time? What does it feel like to be paid a salary closer to the value I bring to an organization? What do I value about work? How does the role of work support me showing up in my other important relationships? What does the steadiness of a salary and benefits enable me to do outside of work time? Where else can my creativity express itself in my life? What will I discover in redefining the relationship between self and work?
What do you want to be when you grow up? is a question I’ve asked myself in the before, during and after of this career change. And it also seems to hold some of the origin story of this extreme intertwining of self and work I’ve found in myself. This question, asks us, even as children, to decide who we are and who we are not. You’ll notice my opening list of responses does not include anything to do with math or sports. I decided early on and continued to reinforce what kinds of things were and were not for me. What if I’d kept an open mind about these areas? What is lost when we let go of things too early? What curiosities were left unpursued? This question also joins one’s identity and being with a job/paid labor role. Moving through my recent career change has allowed me to see the limits and harm of joining these two things together too tightly.
What are we really asking when we ask this question? Are we asking, what are you curious about? Are we asking, what skills have you recently discovered that you want to develop further? Are we asking, what problems do you see that you want to help solve in the world? Are we asking, what is important to you? All of these are infinitely more interesting and alive questions, so let’s ask these instead.
As we ask more alive versions of this question, let’s also practice answering it in more expansive ways. What do I want to be when I grow up?
A present and supportive partner.
A playful and trustworthy parent.
A friend with energy for imaginative, constructive conversation and activities.
An engaged member of my community.
A mother with a whole self.
A conscious, aware human who appreciates and cares for nature.
A reader who regularly spends time in libraries and bookstores.
A human with energy to live her life and love the people she lives it with.
Here’s to asking more alive questions in the pursuit of more alive responses.
Your Turn
I asked a lot of questions in this post! Here are a few to take with you:
What came true from your childhood ambitions about what you wanted to be when you grew up? What didn’t come true?
What is your current relationship to your work like?
What is your more alive version of the title question?
As always, I’d love to hear your responses to these questions or other ideas that this post brought up for you.