Cas is currently

If you had one week left to live, what career would you choose?

No, this is not a complete non sequiter, at least it isn’t one if you had been living my life lately. As it is safe to assume you haven’t been living my life lately, I think I should fill you in on a few details before we progress further with this post.

The end of my course is drawing very firmly to a close and, with it, the need to find a proper (grown up) job is getting ever more pressing. As well as this, lately I have been on something of a down-spiral. No, this isn’t a call for “oh, poor you, feel better soon” comments (though, you know, those have their uses too ). It’s a neurochemical glitch, I’ve been here before, I know full well what is happening, I am being proactive before things have the chance to get truly serious, and I am surrounded by loving people to take care of me.

Part of the whole proactive thing is getting my arse back into some counseling.

In the last couple of years of (blissfully counseling free) happiness I had forgotten how damn annoying counsellors can be. I’m not sure which bugs me more: the quiet murmuring voices; the bad chunky faux-ethnic jewelry; the chintz cushions; the waiting for who will break the silence first; or their tendency to fixate on one tiny detail.

She is determined that all my troubles stem from being unsure what I want to do with my life and, she is the professional, so perhaps she is right. It is just that she had decided that this was the issue after talking to me for less that five minutes. Seriously – sat down; told her my name; that I was here because I felt myself heading back to depression, which is a place I so don’t want to go again; and in response to a question told her I wasn’t sure what I was doing when I finish the thesis (because I’m not), and the next 40 minutes were all about potential career paths, and what it was that I enjoyed doing…

Which brings me to my favourite part of today’s session –
“If you had one week left to live, what career would you choose?”

Now, I am a bad person, and take a mild glee in making the woman work for a living (I’m not going to make it easy for her to get inside my mind, ohhhhhhh no), but I don’t think it was just perverseness that made me pull up short and go “Huh?” when she asked me that.

Come on – if I had one week left to live I would be out living it large, having fun, eating grossly unhealthy amounts of chocolate, not starting a career. Would you?

Once she realised that I was struggling hard not to laugh in her face, she rephrased the question (I felt mildly sorry for her at this point, but something about the woman just grates on me. She’s too fluffy I think).
“What is one thing you enjoy doing above all others and would want to keep on doing, regardless?”

That’s more like it. I’m starting to see why she got her qualifications now.

My answer?
After a few moments deliberation (I didn’t want to blurt out “taxidermy” or something by mistake just for the shits and giggles), I came up with writing and playing around with computers. Simple and has the added benefit of being the truth. That’s not all I enjoy, but that, and research, are the main things that float my boat. ^*1*

So it is safe to say that potential jobs are not all we talked about, and for all my glibness I will be going back, because I know from experience that, (the fact they make me want to strangle them aside), counselors do as a rule know what they are doing and do help. I was just curious – if you had one week left to live, what career would you choose?

And can anyone think of a career for me where I could play around with computers and writing, and get paid an obscene amount of money for it?