On careers & the future & a lot of other hazy things

Website update: I've decided to stick with option 1 for the time being: you can find that site when you click StephBowe.com. I'm going to change that to something that's more appealing to teenagers, so if there are any good websites where they have free blog or website templates, it'd be great if you could share. I can do very limited HTML myself - I made Option 2 from scratch - but I'd like to do have something a little more appealing than that.


This week I completed work experience at my local library.

I shelved and scanned books and all the librarians told me I showed 'initiative'.

I also realised that working in a library didn't suit me.

I realised I need to feel challenged, and to feel like I'm accomplishing something.

While it's a fine career for many smart, bookish people, I think I'd forever feel bored.

I'm a person who does things. I'm frustrated by inaction. I need to always feel as if I'm learning, as if everything I'm doing is worthwhile. That's probably why I've already written two novels, and also why I don't have much in the way of a social life.

So this is what I've decided: I'm going to do work experience at a publishing house in the second semester (if you're a publisher in Melbourne, reading this blog, I am very reliable and eager to learn, so if you're looking for a work experience kid, send me an email. I do, however, tend to trip over things.)

I think work experience has been invaluable, but my future career is still incredibly hazy. At the moment I'm exploring all of my options for courses I can do while I'm still at school.

I want to ask: did you plan the career you have now? Or did you just stumble into it? And those of you still at school: can you say, with any certainty, what you're going to be when you're older?

Thanks.

EDIT: I also want to shoot myself in the foot for not going to Reading Matters. Though I will hopefully go in two years time, when I am seventeen and lovely and glamorous. Not that being lovely and glamorous has anything to do with anything, but I would like to be lovely and glamorous.

And another edit: I feel I have to mention, writing is my passion. My life is based around it. I'm being realistic about careers and things, though the only thing I truly want to do it write. I'd add a bad simile of writing being oxygen here, but I need to get to bed, so I won't.