Today I need to travel back in time a bit and think about my childhood, around age 6-8. What do I aspire to be when I grow up? This age range is good because I’m young enough not to feel jaded by the realities of life but old enough to consider my real desires and fascinations. Usually answers to such question can be far-fetched but it’s not so much of the specifics but rather what it was that I love about my career choices at that age. Hmm…..
I seriously do not recall a huge chunk of my childhood. I don’t know if it’s because my childhood was rather uneventful or I just have a poor memory. In any case, I don’t think I was very self-aware at that age. I tried asking my mom and siblings but none of them remember what I wanted to be when I was a child. What I do remember is what I fantasized about. I know for certain that I was very hooked on Enid Blyton’s series of fairy tales! I’d save up the allowances that my parents gave me to buy these books. It became an obsession and I look forward to days when I can visit the book store to pick a copy. I spent a lot of my younger days reading them and living in a fantasy world of enchanted forests, gnomes and elves. The stories played out in a very visual way in my mind. I don’t remember making up an imaginary story of my own but I could “see” these stories vividly in my mind as I read them. What I can draw from this memory is that my intuition was pretty active as a child. I am also a highly visual person so I am sensitive to visual stimulation. But all these doesn’t give me clues to what I wanted to be. The closest to an answer to this question is a time, I believe it was towards the end of middle school, that my older brother asked me something along the line of what kind of life do I envision for myself. I remember vaguely that I struggled putting into words a vision of a simple country life surrounded by beauty and living happily ever after, just contented being my own space at my own pace. I remember feeling embarrassed that my brother might find me overly simplistic and unsophisticated. Gosh….how far have I strayed from that vision. My life now is nothing like that. Still, this does not answer the question about vocation. So let me try searching my memory bank a little more.
I remember being part of an unofficial student-initiated cheerleading team and I enjoyed staying back after school for practices. When I moved to middle school, I got excited about participating in a fashion show showcasing traditional cultural costumes. There was also a time when I sang a Boy George song solo in front of class and it freaked me out. I never attempted it ever again! I signed up for external aerobics dance classes with my sister and looked forward to those too. When I think about these seemingly uncharacteristic activities for introverts, I deduce that they point to a desire for freedom of expression even though I am uncomfortable being in the spotlight. I enjoyed participating as a group rather than solo, perhaps to reduce the discomfort of being the center of attention.
So that’s it. These are the insights I gleaned from this exercise. Can’t wait to get the next one over and done with.
rk
Who Am I 
I’ve been reading all your entries for the Upstream Field Guide because I’m considering buying it. I appreciate your perspective very much. Thank you for all the posts you have uploaded. I’m just curious, what happened end of May? Did you continue the course? Why did you say “Can’t wait to get the next one over and done with.”? Was it getting too time consuming? Tedious? Not worth-while?
Thanks again, I hope you’ll post either more entries on the remaining lessons or a close out post on why you stopped/didn’t continue in June/July.
hey steve, thanks for reading and dropping me a comment. life happens (got busy) and i dropped of the trail for a bit. i wasn’t confident if i could continue. i really need to though, so i have some substance to work with to unstuck myself. i am dead curious what i can discover from these exercises and where they’ll lead me in my journey. yesterday, i picked-up from where i left off and continued drafting my next post for lesson 5. if you’re considering signing on for this program, be prepared that midway you may feel like giving up because there’s so much work. it’ll feel overwhelming. i think if you can find someone to guide you in person (not virtually) and to keep you on track with your progress, it will be better. their FB group is not very active so you won’t find a lot of support or motivation for your journey. content wise, i’d have to complete all lessons in order to give a fair review. i’m only at lesson 5 now. what i can say so far is that Tsh covers a lot of ground and requires us to do a lot of self-reflection, dig deep kind of work. like i said, they can be overwhelming, but i think some of them are necessary and is valuable for self-discovery. the good thing about this is that you can take your time to complete it, whereas if you engage a life coach in person, dragging teh process will cost you a bomb. but that’s also why you’d tend to slack off since there’s no sense of urgency. i’m working on lesson 5 now and intend to post it soon so do check in if you’re still interested.
good luck with your own journey! what’s your main motivation for checking out this program btw?