I would’ve wanted to be a freelance builder, crafter, designer and engineer. Here’s why I know I can’t, it’s because I am terrible with just knowing things. An experienced craftsman knows their tools by heart, can pick one up that they absolutely need for the job at hand. They know their workshop, inside and out. They can calculate measurements with barely thinking. They just have it together.
That’s not me. You can show me 3 different types of a philips screwdriver and for every one, I’d be like “erm…uh, still philips to me!” when there is subtle differences between them. I can barely measure things to save my life. I am just stunted to learn so many of these things, but I’m only capable of doing small projects at the very least.
People like Adam Savage really have inspired me, having seen the things he can do and how passionate he is about what he does. I love that. I wish I could be that. But I’m not.
Dream job is commenting League of Legends esport.
I can not because it’s very small circle and it would involve going out of my country for events which I can’t. I don’t enjoy traveling too far.
My real dream job would be not needing to have a job
Yep. I don’t dream of work.
Yeah I have no singular passion. I work to eat, but if I could eat without working, it would free me up to learn more, volunteer more, and experience the world more. Money doesn’t buy happiness, but a lack of money stymies happiness.
This is the way.
Just Be.
Author.
I’ve struggled all my life at finding the time to actually finish anything of note. I have folders full of notes, snippets of chapters, character profiles, etc…
All are ideas that I adore, but while I used to consider myself an “okay” writer, it’s very much like any other muscle, if you don’t use it regularly it atrophies. The longer it’s been, the harder it is to get back to it without feeling defeated by the mental effort it suddenly takes to think of one damn metaphor.
And no… i refuse to use A.I. to slop out some books. That would betray every ethical belief about human creativity that I have; which is that there is no “accomplishment” without “struggle”. The time, training, sweat and learning ARE the entire point of creative endeavour.
I was basically doing it until AI came along, the only difference is that I’d rather pick what I work on. That is, I’m a software engineer. Now, they want AI agent baybsitters making it hard to find work that doesn’t use AI.
I guess if I had to pick a second, it would be some kind of professional student or something that works in teams as someone who has a wide variety of knowledge across topics and domains and can use it together while still doing some kind of software engineering along with it.
I’m also a small-scale farmer where I just sell extra, but I don’t know that I would like that as my fulltime job; I certainly wouldn’t like the salary.
My dream job was transcription. It became voice-to-text editor. It is gone now. Was a beautiful few years of tuning the world out and just typing :(
Same on the software engineering front, I feel you.
Commercial Pilot
Even went so far to enroll at Embry Riddle. The money time and desire were all there. This was 40 years ago when I was still a teen. The program I was enrolling in would have taken me all the way from off the street to 737 type rating plus CFI and CFII. That was not all the same program, but multiple. A friend of my dad had contacts with several FBO’s and various FAR 135 operators and promised that he’d find a place for me.
It all came crashing down (puns are always intentional) when I couldn’t pass the eye exam. I’m legally blind in my right eye. I was originally told that’s not an issue since my color vision is perfect… Well it was a problem. I looked outside the United States and I could have achieved my dream. However my controlling mother said if I went outside the country then there would be no money. She went so far to take all of my documents to her safety deposit box so I couldn’t even get a passport or visa. She never did give me my original SSN card or birth certificate… When I had moved out of their house I went and acquired copies.
I did make it into the air, but as a skydiver and not a pilot.
I simply do not dream of labor.
closest i would get to dream labor is labor on a homestead, taking care of animals and such
House husband. Maybe i’ll get lucky.
If I could go back to my early 20s, I would go to travel destinations and bar tend. Alaska, Hawai’i, Bali, etc. I missed out on a lot that I had no idea existed. Today I wish I had the time to tutor prisoners how to read. I think that could be fun.
Bro do the prison tutor thing. That sounds great.
I have an engineer’s heart but not an engineer’s brain. I can fix just about anything and I love thinking about how things work. I work best when I’m solving problems.
But I HATE math. My brain immediately checks out, and it was the only subject I struggled with in school. Academically, I’ve always just clicked more with history and language. I just knew I could never be an engineer because of the amount of math and physics required for an engineering degree. I ended up going for a teaching degree and now I work in museum education.
You probably can. Practice literally rewires your brain.
Maybe astronaut for me? Oh, or professional gymnast. I was pretty good, but practice will not rewire these tendons like you can rewire your brain.
Professional gymnast is a job you should start training for when you’re 6, unfortunately.
Gas station attendant - Did this for a while and loved it. I was left to my own devices, no one to hassle me about how I did the job, and I got to meet strange and interesting folk. I was once referred to a “gas station guru” by a regular because I’d listen to their woes and give timely if unexpected advice for dealing with an absurd range of things. ADHD and self sufficiency make you pretty good at a lot of small tasks.
Bowling alley attendent - that’s just gas station attendant but in an inherently fun and strange environment.
Card shop owner - probably the only place where you’re going to look more appropriate gaming on the clock than not, but actually I like the idea of offering a safe space for people with similar hobbies to me.
Appliance repair and modifications - make a living jailbreaking peoples refrigerators and fixing washing machines? Literally heaven.
Alas, none of these really pay enough to live on or actually exist in the later most case.
I would love to disappear into the wilderness and thrive, like Homer sinking into those bushes.
I ve been felling that desire growing inside of me every week
Space station architect
Game developer of some kind. In my wildest dreams I’m the Stardew Valley guy.
I’ve tried to pursue it a few times but I’m not strong-willed enough to overcome the admittedly minor obstacles. I got shafted in school for IT class. Had 100% on the exam but the teacher was a huge bitch and wouldnt take my coursework so I only got a C. Which meant college wouldnt take me for game dev course and I had to do a baby-mode IT course where they made us learn google (seriously, 2 months of learning how to use AND and shit in google) and photoshop. By the time the class moved onto hardware and programming languages the teacher wouldnt let me participate because I didnt finish the photoshop course.
Decided to just try it alone and managed to scrape together an almost functional prototype after a few weeks. Then found out I’d selected the wrong option incredibly early in the process which meant I had to start all over again. Asked for advice online and instead of advice or information on what else to look out for just received shitload of people telling eachother what an idiot OP is and how people like that shouldn’t even try when they don’t even understand whatever that was. I’m too thin skinned to deal with it so I just gave up.
When AI started taking off a few years back I got a little excited, thinking it could be time to try again now that I can ask computer-daddy to help. Before I’ve even got round to seeing if its feasible, you know, take a look around.
Mate, Claude Code has helped me immensely get so much further into game development than I could ever do on my own. I still build the game myself by hand but it’s knowledge on practices, the software etc is like having every youtube video tutorial next to you.
I wanted to be an archeologist.
Me too, but not until I was like almost 40. I wish my age matched my ambition at any point in my history.
You need a lot of money to be the kind of archaeologist you want to be.
