What I want to be when I grow up.

I had an idea a few years ago that I would like to see a TV show where someone would spend a year doing a different job every day. Obviously the person wouldn't be able to fill the role of a fully trained employee in each role, for example the presenter of the show would not be expected to perform heart surgery or solve a crime, but if they spent a year following people around in a new job every day it would give us a bit of perspective on what pressures and pleasures can be experienced in different careers. The person could follow an A and E doctor one day, a fireman the next, a waitress the next, a chambermaid the next - I thought that it would be a great way to see the experiences of so many different people in different roles. Perhaps it wouldn't be a new job every day, perhaps one job a week? I must admit that I didn't fine tune the details of the show and I have no idea if a show like this has ever been shown but if they did show this on tv I would definitely watch it.

Perhaps they could roll it out to schools and everyone could spend 6 months or a year sampling different roles to see in which they would best fit. It would have been fantastic to have a scheme like that when I was at school as I didn't have the faintest idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. I remember sitting with the careers officer at school and she asked me what I wanted to do when I left school and I remember just staring blankly at her for what seemed like an eternity before saying 'I want to be a fashion designer'. Now, this was funny for several reasons, one of which is that I have had pretty much the same hairstyle give or take a fringe/occasional perm/one hair colour change since I was about 14 and I often insist on wearing colours that clash alarmingly. One of my friends described one of my outfits as looking like I had 'just stepped out of a bondage catalogue' and another as 'the last time I saw a pair of trousers like that they were being worn by members of the band The Sweet on Top Of The Pops in the 70's'. Secondly, this was funny as I eventually ended up working in a pet shop for my work experience at school due to the school having no connections in the fashion industry. Don't get me wrong, I love animals but I am also scared of vast amounts of them after being pecked by birds, bitten by dogs and bitten by a particularly ungrateful hamster when I was a child (the hamster was climbing up some raised wallpaper and I tried to help it get down before it fell and the frightened animal bit me as I gently reached for him). Therefore, being sent for work experience in a pet shop, while I am sure was very worthwhile was also not something to which I what I wanted to dedicate my life.

I'm not sure that I really wanted to be a fashion designer either, I loved art and wasn't too shabby at drawing (however, I couldn't paint to save myself and every painting I ever produced looked like a three year old had painted it and I'm not sure that even my parents would have displayed them on their fridge). I loved designing clothes at home in the comfort of my bedroom but looking at the fashion trends between now and then - I wouldn't have stood a chance in the fashion industry, my designs would have been either too pedestrian or would have been so outlandish they would have made Lady Ga Ga seem positively prudish, I've never managed to find an appropriate balance when it comes to clothes.

I really didn't know what I wanted to do when I grew up, it took me until I was around 23 to really truly decide what career I wanted to pursue and that was after doing a hairdressing course, various A levels and a Computing degree. There were several careers that I wanted to pursue but never really believed that I would ever get close to achieving success in them.

I have always wanted to be a writer, I don't want the fame/celebrity part, I just always wanted to write. I have always loved writing, whether it be a novel or documentation at work, even as a child I always had a pen in my hand. I wrote so many short stories, novels and poems when I was a child - I'm not sure if any of them were in any way decent, I just loved writing. I would dream about storylines for novels and would often carry a notepad around to jot down ideas whenever they came to me. Even my blog posts are an extension of this desire to write. When I was around 14 years old, I started writing a murder mystery novel. Not having access to a computer at that time, yes I really am that old, I hand wrote every word, every line. I wrote and rewrote sections, changing the storyline where I thought it would be appropriate or more effective. I spoke to a policewoman to get her perspective on how it would be to be a female detective in the police force, I researched it and prepared so much for the novel. I hand wrote page after page after page in my neatest handwriting in double line spacing as I had read somewhere that that was the professional way to do it. It took four years give or take to finish the novel and even though I wasn't sure if it was any good, I was proud that I had achieved it.

While at university, I still had this novel and I was still just as proud that I managed to produce it and one of my friends suggested that he could give it to his sister to read as she was very skilled in creative writing and she would be able to give me her views on it. I was a bit reluctant to let it out of my sight to be honest as it was the only copy I had but eventually I agreed that he could take it to her. You can sort of see where this is going and you can probably tell dear reader that, as my novel remains unpublished and I am not a proud author giving you a link as to where to find my work, that this story does not end well.

I gave it to my friend, many loose leaf pages in a binder and he took it to his sister. She read it and happily gave me her thoughts, some good, some critical and I was pleased that she had read it as it gave me food for thought and a lot of directions in which I could take the story to make it better. Then my friend asked if he could read it too and I agreed, they lived in the same house so it wasn't too much of a risk...

Unfortunately, while tidying his room, his mum inadvertantly threw it away. That was that. No copy, handwritten, no way of getting it back, it was gone. Just like that. I can't begin to tell you how devastated I was to lose that novel - I can sort of imagine how Edmund Blackadder felt on finding that his 'magnificent optopus' Edmund: A Butlers Tale had been burnt by Baldrick...well, my novel wasn't 'crammed with sizzling gypsies' but it was still very dear to me - I felt bereft. It wasn't my friends fault or his mum's fault, she didn't realise what it was and he didn't realise that she would throw it away. I'm not bitter and I forgave him when he apologised but it did somewhat crush my writing spirit. This was approximately 12 years ago and even though I have several novels that I am writing at the moment and a few for which I have ideas - I don't think that I will ever achieve the dream that I have always had to see some of my work in print in a book.

I've been thinking a lot about my career recently as I have been ill these past few years and have spent quite a lot of that time unemployed. Sadly, as is the current job market, I have been made redundant from work three times in as many years as I'm sure that a lot of people have and during this time there have been very few jobs for me to apply for even if I had been completely healthy. My greatest desire at the moment, aside from calming down my OCD is to be working again. I love working, I enjoy the banter between my colleagues and the feeling of being a team. Software Testing has been my passion for almost ten years and while, probably not considered glamorous, I adore the challenges that every piece of software brings. Without working I feel lost and so I have spent a lot of time these past few months writing. I am fairly sure that I will never earn a living writing but I would love the opportunity.

When I hear children resolutely stating what they want to do when they grow up, I'm always so proud and simulataneously sad that it took me so long to work out what I wanted to do with my life. While attending an appointment with my psychiatrist recently I was watching 'Junior Masterchef' on the TV in the waiting room - the children in the show were creating meals that I could only dream about. I can barely make an omelette yet these children were creating family meals with panache. I couldn't believe it. The children were stating how much they wanted to be top chefs and I could feel tears of admiration welling up in my eyes that they had so much curiousity and ambition at such an early age, I would have loved to have had that level of drive when I was a kid. I'm not saying that I regret being a software tester, just that I would have done so much more to achieve my dream of being a writer too.

On a lighter note, and back to my tv show idea, I was wondering the other day what would happen if TV actors had to do the jobs that they portray on TV. For example, would David Jason be a good detective after working on 'A Touch Of Frost' for so long? Would Zach Braff or Hugh Laurie be able to diagnose a patient as they have in 'Scrubs' and 'House' respectively? Could Shane Richie really run a bar?

Perhaps I should forget about pitching TV ideas and just stick to being a software tester :)