Right now I’m shifting a bunch of things related to my work, which basically means I’m back to hot pursuit of The Thing. Even more than usual. And the ideas I’m heading toward started bringing up all of these memories of (weird) things I liked doing as a kid. (Another dose of nostalgia.)
It’s reminding me of so much of the career advice, from Jung to Barbara Sher, for when you’re stuck in that I-have-no-freaking-clue-what-to-do place: Explore what you loved doing in childhood.
That childhood review never helped me. I was trying to be way too Sesame Street with my imaginings. I kept searching for memories that looked like a nine year-old version of me spinning around in a field of wildflowers and butterflies. (Idealistic, much?)
The things I spent time doing were simple, and they were so Me that they didn’t stand out in my memory at all. (Reminds me of some guidance I love from Gretchen Rubin: When you’re trying to figure out what to do, try focusing less on what you love to do and more on what you do do.)
Infuriating Funny, but I’ve only been able to recall things I enjoyed as a kid after the epiphanies about new directions, after taking tiny steps toward things I maybe possibly wanted to try.
Oh sure, in hindsight, my childhood experiences make perfect sense. Weird stuff, like:
In fourth grade, my best friend and I decided that what our class really needed was a trivia contest. (Nerd Alert.) So we created… SuperQuiz! And somehow convinced our teachers to let us organize this bizarre intellectual battle for nine year-olds. With trophies and everything!
(Most incredibly embarrassing question: What weighs more: A pound of sand, or a pound of water?)
Then we convinced our teachers that we desperately needed a talent show. Organized that, too.
Next, we created a summer camp for kids in our neighborhood. And convinced parents to pay us for subjecting their children to an off-key rendition of “Do your ears hang low?” OMG, I know.
So I was either fantastic at event planning, or freakishly persuasive in my youth. (And also, really precocious. Shudder.) And I loved setting the mood and scene for an experience. I still do.
But none of these memories evoke an obvious career. Instead they offer teeny tiny clues about what I like to do and who I like to be.
And there are times when all you can do is act as if an idea is the next right thing, and take a little step. It helps me to remember that there really isn’t just one thing. And that no matter what I do, I’m still me. (Well, sometimes that helps. Sometimes it’s totally exasperating.)
It’s looking like I’ll always be discovering my thing, and allowing it to keep doing its metamorphosis thing. Which is one of the reasons I’m super excited about Victoria Brouhard’s Shmorian Thing-Finding class next week. The evolution continues…
Curious… Did combing through childhood memories ever help you find clues about your thing?
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
Oh Briana, this is brilliant!
“I kept searching for memories that looked like a nine year-old version of me spinning around in a field of wildflowers and butterflies.”
Love this because yeah…so do I. I need to think about what I did and enjoyed even if it wasn’t from a movie or all that ‘memorable’.
SuperQuiz! is my kind of thing too. How cool that you did that at 9. My brother and I actually used to play Isaac Asimov’s SuperQuiz (pre Trivial Pursuit) for hours on end.
All this to say, I’m going to borrow your brilliant introspections and just think about who I was/am. Thanks so much for sharing
For the longest time, I had trouble actually remembering anything from my childhood. Big things like the fact that my parents got divorced when I was 11, of course I remembered. But smaller things, not so much. This happened for a variety of reasons (I was estranged from my family for a long time so there’s that) but mainly because I had disconnected from my “true” self. Now that I’m much more connected to who I truly am – and on Facebook with lots of old friends – suddenly things are coming back to me. Little things about how my cat had kittens (in my dresser drawer, thank you very much) when I was 7 and I convinced my teacher to bring the class on a field trip to my house to see them. Doesn’t mean much in terms of a vocation (kitten birthing tours anyone?) but it helps to rebuild the picture of who I was, just as I’m building the picture of who I am. Like you’ve discovered – it seems to be an iterative process.
About there not necessarily being ONE thing: When I was 18 and working as a PA on a (very low budget) movie, there was another PA who was an older woman in her 40′s. She was just starting out in the industry now that her kids were more or less grown. She told me that there is time in your life for two, three, maybe four careers. You don’t have to pick just one and stick with it all your life. You can change and grow and do new things as you discover new things you like. So I’ve never felt the pressure that my peers have that you have to figure out (in your early 20′s no less) what it is you want to BE and DO and then stick with it. You grow, you learn, you change – and what you do changes with that. It’s a discovery process – and it can be a lot of fun if you accept it as being ok.
This was very helpful, thanks! Loved the little revelations about you as a child, too cute.
It’s make me sound like a total witless wonder but, looking back at my childhood (which majorly sucked) the one thing that is a clue to ‘my thing’ was that I was always sketching or fooling with words or writing stories/diaries/secrets and making up codes…you know, for secrecy. lol There are lots of things like that…about what I did do then and DO do now. Lately, I’m looking back and going ‘writer’ DUH! haaa So I’m taking small steps toward that.
I loved what Gretchen said about doing what we already do. I mean, really….it’s kind of goofy that we didn’t think of that ourselves, you know? Sometimes I think we make this whole find our passion thing more complicated than it probably really is!
Eureka! I never could figure out what I liked to do in childhood either. Apparently I was also looking for the grand vision.
This makes me remember that I spent most of my time outdoors: climbing trees, building forts, turning ruins into fantastic castles, exploring .. And I read. And I dreamed of being a detective and noticing things and solving puzzles (I think we had every single Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys and Trixie Belden .. book). And playing Barbies (though we didn’t really play Barbies like other people did – we’d spend the whole day building a castle for our Barbies and setting everything up, then have a short ball and quit).
I still love nature. I still love to read/learn. I still love to create things. I still like being a detective (on myself anyway). Fascinating!
Thank you.
Also, I love the glimpse of you as a 9-year-old. Awesome. (When we were older, we’d have sibling games of Trivial Pursuit to see who was the smartest ever.)
p.s. I am very curious about all this shifting.
One of my earliest childhood memories is of making up stories. As you point out, it surfaced shortly after I had made the decision to start my first novel. But if I had not accessed that memory, I might still be writing fanfiction, or trying to figure out how the heck to plot a novel … instead of allowing Richard Brooks to explain it to me, over on storyfix.com
I *love* reading about everyone else’s childhood sparks!
@Lynn — Oooh, a trivia kindred spirit! So happy that you’re here and would someday love to hear what you drum up about nine-year old you with that introspection.
@Jessica — I think it’s so great that you didn’t feel the pressure to choose just one thing. And I would take it a step further for myself… not only am I definitely going to do multiple things over the course of my life, but I think I also prefer doing more than one thing at a time.
@Wulfie — You’re so right about about making it more complicated than it needs to be, which is also kind of exasperating because when you’re struggling to figure it out, it seems impossible. And when you discover little clues or get clarity around what it is you want to do, it kinda makes you want to smack your head on the desk and go “Duh!”
@Elizabeth — Oh, my dear, I love the glimpse of you as a kid, too! So much! Sometimes we’re so literal about stuff… like, hrm, well I’m not going to be a Real Life Detective so the childhood review does me no good. But all of this is such good investigative info for your detective self: “I still love nature. I still love to read/learn. I still love to create things. I still like being a detective.”
@Vivienne — Ooooh, that’s such a good point. And reminds me that sometimes the clue from childhood gives us a boost of courage or just the right amount of inspiration to try something that we might have been scared to try otherwise.
I wouldn’t say that it helped me FIND anything, but looking back at my childhood, some of the things I’ve pursued since make sense. My mom always said I was a fantastic arguer – and my three years as a media buyer/negotiator in an ad agency made sense. I have kept a journal since I could write, so blogging seems natural and just makes sense. And I’ve always been the one to connect different groups of friends so I could just hang out with everyone I liked instead of dividing time between school friends, church friends, work friends, sports friends, etc. And now? I’m a known connector, so that makes sense. No epiphanies, but you’re right – it’s just natural when you do what you DO.
Storytelling – I did lots of that as a kid and now I write. I clamped down a bit in between after my family started calling me “The Mouth” as I would repeat everything my parents said, especially the inappropriate things. And there was the whole “terrifying the other students” with my stories, from pre-school tales of the devil to middle school tales of the impending apocalypse.