7/30 Things: What is Your Dream Job and Why?

This is another one of those questions that is going to be really difficult for me to answer because I still, while standing on the wrong side of 30, have no idea what I want to be when I grow up. When I was a little girl my stock answer was, “a veterinarian!” ; but as an adult I can say that no, this is not for me. I love animals. I relate better to animals than I do people for the most part.  There is absolutely no way that I can see myself euthanizing animals on a daily basis – sick and elderly or not. My next thought was, “Maybe I should work in a zoo?”; but as an adult I have some real reservations about the ethics of zoos in general. So again, this is probably not something for me.

When I was a teenager I was certain that I was going to be a mortician. I had plans to go to Delgado University in New Orleans. I can remember riding up to the cemetery close to my house with a couple of my friends wearing my cutest skirt and my most professional shoes. I asked the mortician there for an internship and he suggested that I might come help him “hose down” tables and clean up biohazards. He was fucking weird. He was exactly like someone who spent too much time with dead people and inhaling formaldehyde should be. Also, he was wearing a plastic apron and was missing fingers. I left – quickly. No – this was not the job for me. I thought it sounded “cool” and I thought that it sounded like the kind of profession someone who was going to marry Peter Steele one day would be in. It turns out that I am neither cool nor am I the bride of the (late and wonderful) Mr. Steele, and thus I am also not a mortician.

My degree is Environmental Science – but what does that usually equate to in the real world? Supervisors at water treatment plants; low pay grade EPA workers; industrial environmental consultants…all things that sound INCREDIBLY boring and depressing. I want the degree to mean, “protects the environment and cares for animals”, but it is more like, “park ranger or eventual corporate sell-out.”

I have seen internships that I would love to do. There was one that was sitting in the jungle in South America (I forget exactly where, but I want to say Peru), and documenting the activities of amazon parrots. There was another one that was camping out in the wild in Africa (again, I cannot quite remember where) and protecting elephants from poachers. I would love to get a spot on that boat that sabotages the Japanese whalers. Alas, none of these things equate to a career that can sustain my family.

I guess my dream job is to be suddenly wealthy and to be able to devote all of my time to the causes that are important to me. I want to be able to devote time and my skills to things that matter to me and, if all else fails, throw an obscene amount of cash at the problem. I want my life to have meaning. I guess, at this point in my life, I am starting to think that it is too late to make a difference in anything. I wish I could start over. But, as they say, “If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.”  My point is, if you are young and (god help you) reading this, get off of your ass and start working on your dreams now because time is more finite than you can comprehend. Time, death, and the general harshness of life are in pursuit of you, and they will never give up. Do everything you can now to be the person you want to be when you grow up because you are probably going to have to live with that person for a very long time.