Life up until now

I still wonder at night when I am falling asleep what it is I want to be when I grow up. I love my job - changing districts reinvigorated me and renewed my love of teaching. But I wonder what else there is for me.

I have problems identifying what I am good at. People tell me I should do this or that and I think about it for a while and maybe even investigate the possibility, but it fades away. I have no marketable skills other than being fluent in a second language. I can't even add in my head, I have no physical prowess, I lack rudimentary spacial relations skills and have no mechanical aptitude.

Even things I pursue as hobbies or interests tend to lose their luster quickly. I have tried everything and either not finished it or never took it up again. Examples: knitting, quilling, counted-cross stitching, organic gardening, etc.

Sometimes I feel like my whole life has been me feeling blase` about things in general.

I remember being a freshman in college, deciding on a major. My advisor said "What are you good at?" I had no answer. "What do you like to do?" I had no answer. "What do you want to be when you grow up?" Again, silence. These 3 questions have never really had clear, definitive answers for me.

Picture it: 1989, 6th grade. Christopher Rhodes Elementary School. 6th grade yearbook. Question: What do you want to be when you grow up? I think I originally wrote "tall" but rethought and put down something that sounded less flippant. Even at age 12, I was sarcastic and filled with a sense of disinterest. I can't remember what that yearbook said under my picture, but I know other people had definite ideas about their future and where they saw themselves. I never saw myself - I never visualized myself - doing any one particular thing.

There was a time in college when I was utterly despondent and miserable and I thought that maybe I couldn't visualize my future because I had none; I romanticized that the universe had made me incapable of fantasizing something that would never happen. I decided to devote my remaining time to pursuits that made me happy. I traveled a lot, spent a ton of money, and drank whatever would fit in a glass. It didn't make me happy, didn't fulfill me, but makes for some amusing anecdotes.

So when am I the happiest? How can I parlay that into a career goal? I like hearing a good story, I love office gossip. I like sorting through (other peoples') personal problems. I like analyzing the hidden meaning behind an exchanged glance. Other than making me the target demographic for LOST, I don't think these are job qualifications.

I like people. I laugh at their foibles. I get to meet 100 different people a year. I guess being a teacher was always my career destiny. Everyone told me as a kid that I should be a teacher. I said no to rebel.

So here I am, without an answer, but pretty sure I made the right choice nonetheless.