What do you want to be when you grow up?

in secondary school that was the one of the main issues amongst most of us, what do we want to be when we grow up? It was even an issue in primary school, the last two grades anyway.
Funny thing is that it feels that I had a better idea of what I wanted to be when I'd grown up, then I do now. When I was eleven, I wanted to be a biologist, I wanted to study nature and everything that had something to do with it, but a few years later that didn't seem too interesting to me anymore, probably since biology was not my best subject. Then I wanted to be a writer, that was on my list when I was ten as well, but since a cousin of mine (one whom I looked up to) just started his biology studies (which he never finished btw), I wanted to do the same thing, funny little me. But the ambition of being a writer never really went away until I was 18 years old, wrote a book, sent it to some editors and got a reply two days later that it was not what they were looking for. It then never occured to me that they might not have read it, since the reply came nearly faster then they must have received my writing, but it really discouraged me though.

When I was 17 I thought language studies might be what I was waiting for, so after I graduaded secondary school, I took up interpreting and translating at college, which was really nice, a lot of fun, freedom, but it was really hard as well, since I took too much of the fun and freedom and too little of the class and studying for my part. To no one's surprise I failed a lot of classes (most of them, I didn't have to redo any English exams, nor filosophy, but for all the rest (world economics, world history, Spanish, Dutch etc.) I had to redo every exam... not good), I failed most of my exams for the second time around, and then decided to take it easier and take up secretary studies, which was not too difficult for me, but it was nothing for me. I sat in a class with girls who only wore designer clothes, designer handbags etc. I had some friends there, but just like me they didn't really fit in either, who were we kidding anyway, we were not meant to be a secretary, so didn't finish that either. Then I ended up with some personal issues (don't we all) and ended up in Scotland. A job as Customer Services Representative, and ever since October 2001 all I ever did besides giving birth was working as an operator. That was not on my list when I was younger...

So now I'm stuck with the main question I left unanswered in my teens... what do I want to be when I grow up?
I have no idea

"You can be anything you want to be", I tell my kids all the time, even though they are still toddlers, I want them to keep their options open, however, I have some ideas in my head on what they'll be when they've grown up, how come I can do that for them and not for me??

But the clock is ticking and fact is that I don't want to work as an operator for the coming forty years though... however I do enjoy what I do, I doubt I'll still enjoy it when I've passed my sixties...