Last night Alan turned to
Last night Alan turned to me and mused, "Wouldn't if be nice if we could have multiple careers? Like, I think about all the other things I might have been. Broadway performer. Musician." I don't remember the other things he named -- I was half asleep, so I mumbled something like, "Well, if you believe in reincarnation, maybe in another life." But I also didn't really pay attention because what Alan said didn't seem like much of revelation to me. I've pondered alternate careers for myself so many times before that nowadays I try to avoid thinking about it at all.
Recently I've been enjoying Rocketboom (thanks to Ethan for pointing it out to me), a daily videolog with quirky commentary about pop culture, internet, technology, and politics-related tidbits. Ethan and I have both been laughing our way through the Rocketboom archives and also discovering trivia about its co-producer and host Amanda, an aspiring actress. We were talking about how it's pretty cool that, for an actress, she puts herself out there on the internet so publicly, and seems to really "get" the power of the web.
Somewhere in that conversation, Ethan asked, "You think you could act?" I replied pretty automatically, "No, I don't think so. Of all the careers I've considered, acting has never been one of them." But that's kind of a lie. Of course I've never considered acting seriously, because that would be an insult to the people who are real actors and are good at what they do. But during the many times I sat in the audience watching friends perform in high school plays, I've definitely wondered whether I could ever do the same. "Maybe I could be a passable actress," I'd think to myself, "if I had a little more training, experience... and guts."
This got me thinking about all the other careers that I've ever thought about, all with various degrees of seriousness:
-doctor
-high school teacher
-journalist
-science writer
-travel show host
-biologist
-environmental activist
-violinist
-forensic scientist
-web developer/designer
-and I'm sure there's more.
But right now I'm just trying to be an engineer, and that's stressful and energy-consuming enough as it is. So it is kind of too bad we don't have multiple chances to do all the things we think are cool in life. Because there are so many people doing cool things, and it's too bad I'm not one of them.