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.
“I am terrible with just knowing things.” Has anyone tried to help you with this? School or a friend maybe? And do you think it’s a problem with memory or that you just can’t grasp the concept? Sometimes it takes a teacher that you just click with or says just the right things in the right way. Or it takes persistence. Just don’t give up. I guarantee one day something will hit you and you’ll go "oh, I get it "
I want to be a landscape architect with a heavy emphasis on sustainability. I dream of turning dead parking lots into water catchment basins to support native perennials and trees. ala Brad Lancaster
but I can’t afford to go back to school, nor is there even a program like that in my area.
I’d love to be a philosopher, but the only job you can really get is teaching philosophy. Which is more of a teacher job and not really a philosophy job ironically enough.
I work in a metal fabrication shop so I’m usually tired when I get home most days so it would be hard to try and start a YouTube channel or something, and I’m not charismatic enough to just talk openly to a camera and have people watch.
I still read up on old thinkers, i just don’t get money for it. Kierkegaard is an older one i like. Idk if Alan Watts is considered one but he’s my favorite modern “thinker”, he gave me the most beautiful idea I’ve ever encountered so he’ll always be in my top 3.
Occultism/Natural Law/Hermeticism also have some interesting ideas.
Have to wade thru a lot of shit tho, especially in older books. My favorite was someone legitimately believing if you boiled piss for 5 years it would turn into the philosophers stone lolol. And if the temperature changes even 1° at any point in the 5 years you have to start over. And that’s why philosopher stones don’t exist anymore. I think the alchemists would say he had the “gold fever” as alchemy was more about turning a person as worthless as lead, into someone as valuable as gold. And there’s a clue to finding the actual “philosophers stone” in its name.
Space station architect
As a decent engineer, the good ones are generally those that don’t fully know what things are, but how they are put together.
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
Either software engineer or game developer, but both are, just like others have mentioned, more about babysitting AI agents rather than doing the iteration work if actually writing the code.
I guess the career im going into is either some other tech job via an internship or just work for the council government as an urban planner.
I spent my working life sitting at a desk, so I have regularly thought about how my life would have turned out had I turned one of my high school side interests into a career instead: carpenter; electrician; or metal fabricator.
One career path I considered, but I was put off by the maths: engineering. Never picked a field/speciality. I just was always interested in how stuff worked, and wanted to have the skills to design cool solutions for problems.
Physicist or Astrologist. Higher education still isn’t exactly disability-friendly, despite a lot of us would have been great scientists.
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.
Any given day, it changes - sometimes I’m ten pages deep in legal research and thought “why didn’t I go to law school?” Other times I think about how being a pilot would be fun, or I wish I would’ve stayed with my buddy’s rally team, or if I’d…
Basically, I have lots of dreams. If I had to pick one, currently, I’d say that I wish I could be one of those litter pick up road crews but make enough money to survive.
Pilot, or work on a deep sea vessel
For me, I don’t think there’s anything I can’t do. Its a belief that’s generally been helpful in accomplishing great things.
With that said, if I had a do-over I might go into law. Would have been helpful to have an adult help me navigate that route as a youngster and I’m happy with what ive done and excited for what comes next.
House husband. Maybe i’ll get lucky.
Blogger. I would dive into random topics, and write about them. The blog could also have relevant pictures, videos, diagrams or whatever I happen to find interesting at the time. It’s just that blogging probably isn’t a viable profession, so I’ll continue working for a sinking ship in the meantime. When this company goes bankrupt, I’ll figure something out.
