WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP? (INCLUDING A BIT OF BACK STORY)

What do you want to be when you grow up?

This is something I’ve been asking myself for a while now. It’s a tricky question.

All through school and for most of university I was convinced that the answer was ‘I want to be a teacher’. That was the plan. I didn’t really know what I would teach, but I seemed to be OK at learning languages so opted for studying German at university. I did think that just German would be a bit boring though, so I needed something to go alongside it. Given the options of French, Spanish and Italian I decided to go for the most useful of them all. Italian. Oh wait, Italian really isn’t very useful for anything much (sorry Italian friends). Not if you want to teach in the UK school system, anyway. But I had good friends in Italy and thought it might be fun to be able to speak to them in Italian rather than making them speak English all the time. And who wouldn’t want to spend a compulsory year abroad in Italy… It does also occasionally add quite nicely to my score whilst watching University Challenge, I’m not going to lie. And people do always seem disproportionately impressed when they think I can speak Italian. (Please don’t ask me to, I’m very rusty!) It also gives me a little more clout when I say to the husband ‘Can we go to Italy on holiday this year? I need to brush up my language skills a bit…’ (Can you tell that I’m trying to justify my student debt?!)

Holidays to Italy are ALWAYS a good idea! – Verona 2015

So there I was studying German and Italian at university, determined to go into teaching. That was right up until I spent 9 months as a teaching assistant in Italy. That’s when I realised that maybe it wasn’t the right path for me. The problem? The kids in Italy were interested. They wanted to be there. They wanted to learn. I wasn’t convinced that my pupils in the UK would be as enthralled when I tried to teach them about the German subjunctive. I can’t blame them.

I came back from Italy ready for my final year of uni, except that I now had no idea what I wanted to do afterwards. My plans from the last 8 years had now been thrown out of the window. I no longer had an answer when people asked me what I would do next. Now, I’d spent a significant part of my year abroad sampling the local gelato, and it was amazing. British ice cream is hugely lacking by comparison. It also happened that around half an hour from where I lived in Italy there was Gelato University. Yes, you read that right. The opportunity to learn the artisan craft of making gelato. Amazing! Suddenly there were (very expensive) pipe dreams of studying at Gelato University and opening a gelateria in the UK. I was back to having a staple answer when people asked me what I wanted to do. The plan would be to have somewhere that would be open in the day, but also late into the evening where people could spend time as an alternative to pubs and clubs. A chilled (haha, geddit?!) and relaxed atmosphere with some great ice cream. I still occasionally tell people that it’s my dream although, if I’m honest with myself, I can’t see that it’s ever going to actually materialise. There was a renewed little spark in my heart this week when the cafe at the end of my road put up a ‘For Sale’ sign, but who am I kidding? I can’t run my own business, right?

So, other than a Gelaterista (I have no idea if that’s a real word, but it sounds good), what do I want to be when I grow up?

I’m now coming to the end of my maternity leave, and have handed in my notice for my old job, so I know I won’t be going back to that. I enjoyed my old job and really loved the people I worked with, but it’s time for a change. There was a lot of weekend work which would make it hard to take the small person to visit family and friends. With the husband working 9-5 weekdays and sometimes studying in the evenings, we need the weekends to be protected. I’ll be starting a new part time job soon which I might tell you more about when I start, but in a nutshell I’ll be doing some care and befriending work with the elderly for a few hours a week. It’s completely new territory for this administrator, but I think I’m looking forward to the challenge. It will also allow me to continue spending most of my time with Pickle. Hopefully it will still allow me time to blog, as I love doing this more than I expected to.

The last year of my twenties is now rapidly approaching (hello 29!), and it’s got me to thinking what my long-term aims are. Do I want a career one day rather than just day jobs? What are my priorities? Can I have everything I want, or will I need to make compromises along the way? Do I want to invest money and time in retraining to have a profession, or do I just want to do the minimum to get by so that I can spend as much time as possible with family? Do I want to actually use my degree? What am I capable of? What’s important to me? How am I going to pay for those holidays to Italy?

Holiday photo credit to the husband – Desenzano del Garda 2015

What do I want to be when I grow up?

Actually, deep down, the answer to this has always been simple. My greatest ambition in life has always been to be a mother. Great. I can tick that one off the list. Job done. So now I’ve decided to shift the goal posts a little. I don’t just want to be a mother anymore. Don’t get me wrong, that small, throwaway word ‘just’ isn’t me trying to belittle motherhood. It’s an enormous challenge. I know that. I’m living it. What I mean is, I don’t want to be just a mother, rather I want to aim to be the absolute best mother I can be. I don’t know yet quite what that looks like, but it’s something I want to explore. I want to be an example to her of what a strong woman looks like. It might be an example of being a career-focused woman, or it might be an example of a woman who stays at home, caring for and working for the family. Equally strong, equally important, equally valid.

What do I want to be when I grow up? Who says I even want to grow up anyway?!

Laura x