In an ideal world, I would be peteretta pan. Whilst growing up seems great in its added independence and freedom which I crave, there's also that little thing about jobs. This school year will be my last and then I'm out into the big world, but I have no clue what to do. I don't have a 'thing': if you put me with science students, I seem very artsy/humanitiesy, but put me amongst the arts and humanities, I'll seem very pragmatic and no-nonsense. I'm not a scientist and I don't want a career in science, so that narrows my options a little. I've been on degree webpages and job sites looking at careers and career areas and nothing interests me for more than a couple of weeks or even days. I go through a brief period of absolutely loving something then drop it cold and never look back. I don't want a career that pays megabucks, I just want to be able to wake up everyday knowing I'm doing something I love. How do you do that?! Why does nothing seem interesting anymore- even as a hobby?(unless you count daydreaming and escapism in books, TV and film as a hobby) Does anyone else feel like this?
He, I have this problem with absolutely anything. Even with relationships with people: when the curiosity and magic of the "unknown" fades away, it's just not interesting anymore. About careers, I have the "advantage" of knowing that my field is artistic. But when I was in high school, I had no idea what to do, because I was interested in EVERYTHING related to art and design, but not to the point of wanting to work of that. So I chose architecture because it gives a broad spectrum of activities you can do once graduated that have little to do with sticking your shoes on concrete and deal with yellow helmets. When I started the career, I discovered I loved the history and I hated creating, making projects. I'm good at noticing details but not creating them, I have no patience. So I decided to start Curatorship and Art History because I love museums, but my parents weren't happy because they said that architecture was way better and blah blah blah, so I made a deal and I study two or three Architecture courses while doing the other career. So what I did, in sum, was to try something I thought it was going to work out according to my interest (=variety of activities related to art/design), and then, once I saw better what I liked and not, decided "for real".
My brother has a similar but different problem. He's finishing high school this year and he's damn good at everything he does and everything interests him, so he's kind of lost. So he decided to do what was easiest for him so he could do his favourite activities in his free time. Seriously, you give him maths, physics, writing tasks, biology, computer science, clay modelling, horticulture, cooking.. he stares for 15 minutes at the person doing/explaining something and he then does it better. He says ideally he'd like to play the guitar, the piano and be an actor, but he's going to die without a salary. I don't know if it's going to work, I'll tell you in a year.
You could try doing different activities in your free time to see if you can find something that hooks you. In my opinion, first-hand experience is 10000000x better than just cross out activities from a catalogue. Go see how people work in studios or companies or private offices, etc, that helps a lot. I went to a museum and asked to be an observer for a day, and I fell in love with the job they were doing!
