When I was younger I thought about being an egyptologist for a brief phase. Rather silly in hindsight. latter wanted a career involving lego and was a bit more serious about that, but nothing ever came from it. When I reached my teens and got really into video games but didin't have enough confidence to dig too deep into the game making process so I tried to get a job at a local video game retailer but was rejected. They latter went out of business anyway. After that I gave up all hope of getting a decent career or job. Did security for a few years, easy work but didn't last.

See, that's the point. I never wanted to be anything, never had any dreams, didn't really want to do anything. When I realized that in my teens I thought about it quite hard but in the end I figured out there's nothing I'd really like to do so I started doing just that - nothing.

Took me a long while to realize being a lighthouse keeper was my true calling.

When I was younger I wanted to be a nurse or some form of small time medical physician. Combine that with a deep longing for travel and you get a rough idea of what I dreamed to do. In my late teens I attempted to join the military twice but was rejected. Thought about Peace Corps (education department) for a while but that would require a bachelor's degree and my fears of accumulating debt and rejection have petrified me into considering it as nothing more than a 'pipe dream'. Maybe next lifetime...

Secretly, Priesthood has interested me from time to time because on the surface it seems like a job where you are always helping others through their life journey. Running a missionary hospital in the middle of nowhere learning about other peoples, their language, and culture seems like an ideal way of living out my petty existence.
If only I had been born a few hundred years earlier.

I wanted to be a vet and had high hopes, so did everyone around me. Then some shit happened and I did terrible in school.

Moral of the story: Life sucks.

When I was in my early teens I decided that I wanted to become an artist since I kept drawing almost all the time. My parents encouraged me to pursue this so I went into studying art after leaving high school. Things didn't turn out so well, mostly because I lacked social skills due to having speech problems so I failed college and had to retake my vocational course.

I still do draw and I'm pretty good at it, yet I'm still hesitant towards showing my stuff to people.

Never wanted to be anything. Now look where I am, I'm really nothing.

>>14860
I wanted to make movies as a kid. I still come up with fictional worlds and stories in my head all the time. But for some reason the characters are always cliche and suck. I also played around with my old electronic keyboard (piano not computer keyboard) a lot as a kid and I would come up with little melodies and this would be the 'motif' of a character or something from my worlds or stories, this got me interested in composing too. But I learned through other stuff that life doesn't work how you want it to so I decided to find a random job I didn't care about to pay for my hobbies and as I became more attached to the 2d and computer world and grew away from the 3d world I decided I just wanted to concentrate more on this stuff and simply go to work to pay for my stuff. Also more or less because I have to.

Post edited on 20th May 2013, 1:10pm

I wanted to be a fighter pilot. I would always draw planes shooting each other down.

I wanted to be a network administrator or some other type of IT job other than call center.

I even managed to get a two year degree in this many years ago, but that turned out to be a useless slip of paper.

If only I finished back in the mid to late 90's...

>>14863
>>14870
These. I never had a childhood dream job or anything of the sort. I was always bitter towards the people that seemed to be born into the world with aspirations and dreams.

Originally I wanted to be a Ninja Turtle, but I was told I couldn't do that.
I was looking forward to taking over the family pub, but my dad bankrupt it.
Also wanted to be a video game tester for Nintendo.

After that I just kind of started hoping I could find a way to apply my hobbies to make money in some way I didn't hate. But I never had a clear idea of how to achieve this.

>>14877
>Also wanted to be a video game tester for Nintendo.

Damn right. I wanted to do that, or at least make games. When I was about 10 or 12 or so, I saw a book on C++ at a store and looked at it, knowing "They make games with C++." I opened the book to the middle, saw some terrifying shit, and dropped the dream forever.

Now I don't have any, but honestly it's easier that way. It's better to go at one's own pace.

A pilot, I can even fly a sailplane. Being diagnosed as slightly colour blind put an end to that.

>>14883
> saw some terrifying shit
it was sepples alright

A lawyer. I wanted to use words in a pretty way and fight falacies with my objections.
Then I realized I don't know how to speak.

I never wanted to be anything. Whenever I was asked I'd always respond with a canned answer of cop or firefighter or w/e kids said back then, until I figured out that there was really nothing that i wanted to be. There was nothing I wanted to work for. The only thing I enjoyed was staying in my room playing video games.

Life really isn't worth living for.

A farmer, because I thought growing plants was the shit. But then I realised being a farmer was shit, and I liked studying science, so now I'm studying to be a plant scientist.

I wanted to be a scientist. Well, I halfway succeeded; I have an M.A. in Experimental Psychology that I got three years ago.

I always wanted to be a writer. After dicking around for years I went to school, got a degree in English, started getting stuff published, and now I am a content writer for a bunch of websites.

The work is boring but I can do it in my comfy pants, set my own hours, and the pay is pretty decent if I'm efficient. It also gives me the freedom to work on my own stuff and continue my education.

I'm nothing special. You could do it, too.

Post edited on 21st May 2013, 4:22pm

>>14901
> /so/ - Ronery
> Yes, our general NEET board.
Am I missing something here?

>>14904

I'm >>14899. If it helps, I haven't found any work with my degree, am almost about to get on SSI, and am now currently a NEET. I should feel like a loser, but I don't for some reason.

That fact that I got an education doesn't make me any less of a failure.

When I was little I wanted to be a NEET but I obviously didn't know the term. I wanted to be a kind of monk completely withdrawn from society, paying bills and ordering food via the Internet. Now that dream has partially come true since I'm on SSI.

>>14904
>It's like when you look at a guy with a debilitating disease or physical handicap accomplish something incredible. You're supposed to feel inspired, like you can do anything, but the end result for miserable people like me is that they realize that they are so worthless that a person with no arms and legs can achieve more than them. It's upsetting.
That reminds me of reading about a child prodigy when I was in elementary school. Reading the article (about how intelligent he was, soon to go to college at an Ivy League school, etc.) made me feel completely incompetent in comparison.

Now that I think about it, what happens to child prodigies after that one moment they're noticed? They almost always just disappear after that, never to be noticed again. Is being a child prodigy similar to being the star football player in high school, their moments in the sun usually leading nowhere (like most of us)? Or is it that child prodigies are somehow unsuited to making discoveries or doing anything new in the arts or sciences? Or is there some other factor in the genius who contributes to society, unrelated to the intelligence identified in the prodigy? It could be a combination of the above factors (or something entirely different), but I can't really answer the question with any confidence.

>>14863
Wow somebody who feels exactly the way I do.
>being a lighthouse keeper was my true calling
Okay maybe not.

>>14901
>After dicking around for years I went to school, got a degree in English, started getting stuff published, and now I am a content writer for a bunch of websites.

If you don't me asking, how did you get into this? I need some extra income while I complete school, and I'm an above average writer. I just have no idea where to look.

>>14934

It's still too early for you it seems but I understand that. I'm sure that one day you too will understand how great lighthouses truly are.

>>14940
You're many years too late friend. Lighthouses make great scenery and their automated systems are pretty cool. No one even works there as a dayjob anymore.

>>14932
The media and public has a very short attention span. Especially since these kids aren't going to be curing cancer and making fusion power viable next month. But not all child prodigies or high school star jocks burn out if that's what you're getting at. You may derive some schadenfreude from that but it'd be tough to credibly claim the vast majority as burnouts. Sure in the end they might not be the next Einstein or President, but having a decent career is certainly not out of their reach if they work for it.

>>14942

Not in first world countries maybe but I'm sure there are some places on earth where there are still some people who do it. Same with milkmen.

>>14945
>Sure in the end they might not be the next Einstein or President, but having a decent career is certainly not out of their reach if they work for it.
That's my point, though. I wasn't trying to say they end up gas station attendants or completely burn out or something like that, but that their star is very brief before ending up in an unremarkable career for a few dozen years then retiring, like almost everyone else. And, like the football star, although not all disappear after that one moment, almost all of them do. People who make great discoveries in the sciences or create great art tend not to be child prodigies or savants (not even a predominance of them), so I was thinking there were likely factors other than intelligence that have greater importance with relation to those cases. It certainly plays some role, but it's hardly decisive.

I'm not trying to derive pleasure from those that do burn out (which is probably a fairly small group anyway) but, when I ran across the article many years ago, it led me to wonder about what "genius" means and its relation to intelligence. It's rather obvious that what is meant by "genius" is different for different fields, and the importance of raw intelligence would change with each field, but the question of intelligence and genius nonetheless occupied me for long enough that I remember thinking about it at the time, even well over a decade later.

>>14953
Well I guess we all have to keep in mind the definition of success is both relative and subjective. You may be the most successful in a family of junkie rejects for just being a FT employee in a dead-end McJob and having your own apartment. On the grand scale it may not seem like much though. On the flipside a child prodigy may feel disappointed ending up as just a middle manager at a fortune 100 but to many others it may be considered a pipedream of great success out of their reach.

think youll find this useful http://www.futuretimeline.net/

I'm not a greedy person, all I ever wanted in life was to play video games and masturbate to anime all day

Yet the world constantly keeps denying me this, it tells me I have to work hard and that life isn't supposed to be fun

What's even the point?

>>15060
you cant have pleasure without pain, no fun without unfun things

>>15061
[citation needed]

>>15060

Why don't you become a firefighter then?
It is literally the easiest job if you live in a quiet town. You have little to no fires to shut,some small tasks that you help with and you just sit around and get average pay.
Sure you might die, but hey, the pay is good and you just sit around waiting for alarm.

It is a dream job.

>>15061
I don't think that's necessarily true either. While it is true that undergoing pains can sometimes bring later pleasure, and taking pleasure can sometimes bring later pains, there is no law that either requires the other. I think what often happens is that people blame their taking pleasure in things for pains that they have experienced (e.g. "I masturbated too often and became addicted to pornography which led to my family shunning me" etc.) and people say that their pains have brought them greater pleasures (e.g. "I worked for eighty hours every week so I can afford a large house, a good family, and nice things"), but these are just stories they cobbled together from the disparate elements within their memories. We want to believe that our pains will bring about future pleasures, like modern day ascetics rejecting the world for the pleasures of the future (whether that future be in heaven or in more worldly happiness), but it's only because we want reasonable (i.e. comprehensible) justifications for the myriad ways in which our lives go.

>>15064
What I think the guy is trying to say is it's a contrast&comparison thing. ie you wouldn't know what pleasure truly is without first experiencing pain, or joy without sadness. Without the dark, how would we recognize the light?

>>15065
yeah I think its pretty obvious. I always see NEETs complaining about how they never find joy in anything anymore.

>>15065
It's not like you need to know what pleasure is. It just feels good.

>>15063

My country is on fire every summer

>>15066

That's because those are faggots that failed at life

>>15063
there's a social environment there which is....i guess 'traditional' and 'masculine' and shit. Might be too annoying for some people. Also, there MIGHT be leftover racial tensions. Its a -it- like police environment.

source: father was a firefighter and paramedic, mothers friends involve a lot of LE.

>>15073
*lot of LE and firefighters.

>>15074

Personally for me, it is ideal. I like being strong hero that saves people from danger,but I don't act social at all.
Just say hi every now and then and thats it.

>>15084
Well you're doing it for a sense of RIGHTEOUSNESS so that's enough...

Make video games. Still do. Don't have the skills to do it on my own. Don't even know how to program. All I have are ideas, and everyone is an ideaguy.

>>15158
Most programmers lack ideas. I could put some game together, but it's boring and I lack motivation. You might not be missing out on as much as you think.

I wanted to help people. Like, therapy or something.

My inability to deal with social situations and general distaste for most people brought an end to that though.

I still try to be as helpful as I can in places like this, and when I browsed places like 4chan, though. I'm a pretty conflicted person, it seems.

I think I wanted to be an elementary school teacher. I'm just very happy when I see kids smile. I think the dream ended when I take a look at the various forms of children's entertainment-- not to mention, how kids actually act nowadays... even if I did inspire them to be the saving grace of the declining youth, that would pretty much all be in school, as I have no control of what really happens in their homes. Possibly I could teach English in a Japanese school far away from the big cities, I guess that could be nice.

Being a classical dancer. It's the only thing I ever really wanted to do and fought for with all my might. I utterly failed, however. After I finally quitted, my life started to become what is now.

>>15202
Well I think it's still better to have tried than not tried at all. Lots of people tend to want closure for good and bad news. Don't have to lose sleep over wondering if you wasted your chance or what could have been if you tried some and didn't make any of the cuts.

A jazz pianist.
I can play piano fairly well, now, but doing it as a career is... farfetched at best.

>>14957
That timeline could be entirely ruined by next year.
Brazil right now is entering turmoil and so is Turkey, you can't predict how that will develop, and many other predictions further on are based on, such as
http://www.futuretimeline.net/21stcentury/2023.htm#turkeyenergy

I hate bullshit sites like that.

Nothing realistic, nothing really.
I have always been vacuous.

Ofc i said something like Astronaut, because many said that too.

When I was a teenager, I wanted to be a programmer. I would spent most of my time in my room just writing whatever came to mind, usually dumb scripts that gave me a laugh. Later on I started making games, though I never finished any of them because of a lack of ideas.

Then I realized that you have to know people in order to get anywhere in the programming world. And I don't know anyone. And it's starting to feel like everything I've ever learned about programming is becoming obsolete.

>>14863
it's the exact same for me. i always thought it was odd when i was asked what i wanted to be, because i never really had an answer--i genuinely dreamed that my future would be me in some desolate place, maybe in the middle of the desert or anywhere with an appropriate lack of people, in a small building and PC, with some machine that served me food... i've always wanted to be a lighthouse watchman as well. spending my days watching the ocean, drinking tea, and reading; the most romantically pleasant life in my eyes. maybe we could each have a ligthouse on opposite ends of a bay, and i'll flash the light to tell you i'm heading to sleep or to remind you that you aren't alone

There hasn't been a single thing I've wanted to study or do for a living since the day I was born.

Though I suppose, living on a space station may not be too bad. That's unattainable, though. It's not something I like the idea of enough to work for. More like if somebody came up to me and said "Hey, do you want to live on a space station?" I'd reply "Yeah, sure."

Actually, when I was very young, I wanted to be a street sweeper. Not the driver, though. The vehicle. I don't know.

>>15410
>Actually, when I was very young, I wanted to be a street sweeper. Not the driver, though. The vehicle. I don't know.

Watcha smokin' Dorothy?

I've always wanted to draw, but it's so time consuming to get even remotely good at it. My brain has become so hooked to having immediate results that I can't really get into anything that requires effort. I blame the internet.

>>14860
I've actually wanted to be a NEET as long as I can remember.

>>15423
Lots of people do. Just that most call that time retirement. Many would retire early if they struck it rich. Guess it all comes down to old age security and material preferences. Not everyone can live on a meagre pension - some want to travel the world in style and buy jet skis and stuff.

>>15426
>Not everyone can live on a meagre pension - some want to travel the world in style and buy jet skis and stuff.
Fuck that shit. Give me a bedroom, enough food and drink, a computer with access to the Internet, and my video game collection, and I'm set for life. So, pretty much everything that I have right now. I wish I could somehow convince my parents of this so they'd quit pulling the "full time job" card on me.

If the entire point of life from a Ford Driver perspective is to work for 25-30 years at some shitty job and then retire to spend the next 20 years at home until you die, why not just cut the bullshit?

>>15437
Agreed.
When you grow up poor you quickly learn how to get a lot from a little.

>>15438
I didn't even grow up poor to be honest (if anything I was spoiled), but one of my friends came from a poor background. Spending some time with him helped temper my ego and understand stuff from a more poor perspective. This, combined with the fact that my intersts consist mainly of old video games that were long since paid for, the Internet, and a TCG (win tournies = get store credit = get more cards = spend less money/sell cards), it's really set myself to where that's all I need. I don't need a fancy house with a big yard, I don't need children, I don't need an expensive new car, nor do I want any of that.

I'm really lucky that my current situation allows me to have this for now, just skirting by with my parents on part time work. I have no ambition for fulltime work at all, and explaining it to them is too hard because of the era they grew up in.

>>15426
I hate work to the point of being very willing to downsize and lower my expectations to get out of it. Now I'm on welfare and live a very modest life with few possessions. The freedom I get by this is well worth sacrificing luxury and decadence. It's all about that Diogenes mentality.

>>15448
In a way that must be nice to be very content with less. Some people would rather suffer alot and enjoy a few happy years when they are old. While others prefer the other way around - NEETing and having your fun until the money runs out (and perhaps ending it before the suffering).

A dentist.

I'm deathly, deathly afraid that I'm too stupid or lazy to cut it in the world of dentistry, so I've been avoiding enrollment. Until this year.

Haruhi help me.

>>15460

I wanted to be a dentist once, but then I realized it's 90% social interaction. Then again a lot of jobs are, which is why I'm probably doomed

>>15461
I'm attracted to the social aspect of dentistry being so rigid and impersonal; the social interaction, if you can even call it that, is scheduled and entirely professional. After that short bout of conversation they're going to have a whirring drillbit or other inhumane-looking, gleaming metal tool inside their mouth to discourage any tongue wagging, literally.

I don't presume to know your situation, but I do know that most people including my socially retarded self find it infinitely easier to talk to someone if they already know how the conversation will unfold.

As a kid I wanted to be a writer.
In my early teens I wanted to be a lawyer.
In my later teens I wanted to be a gambler.
Now I don't really want anything.

>>15460
Getting into dental school is very competitive here as I'd guess it also is in other western countries. You having the grades, being able to pass the interviews and other app hurdles to enrol already says something about your caliber. Don't short change yourself.

In primary school I wanted to be a teacher. In high school I wanted to be a game designer. After compulsory education, all I wanted to do was get a minimum wage job then play games, watch anime and get drunk during the hours I weren't working.

Somehow that didn't work out; I hated associating people with similar social status in my local area (they were the worst people to socialize with, nothing like Tohno-chan) and my family wasn't happy with my lack of career path. The straw that broke the camel's back was my friends in high school that I did get along with, had successful careers in their respective fields.

Now I'm taking a massive gamble on college education that may or may not lead me to a "respectable" career. I'm not going to lie; if a group of NEETs befriended me, that I got along with and made me feel comfortable about "being useless" in society, I would drop everything again and just leech off my parents. I wish I didn't have this need for social interaction and acceptance.

Post edited on 19th Jul 2013, 7:33am

>>15475
> I wish I didn't have this need for social interaction and acceptance.

Self-conditioning can do a lot.

>>15481
oh look. every hipster's favorite philosopher. read some schopenhauer casual

>>15482
Already did, and he's also a good instructor for this purpose. "The Wisdom of Life" would be a good place to start for that anon.

I never had any dreams as a kid. When anyone asked about my goals or what I wanted to do when I grew up, I always said "to survive". I had no idea what to say.

I still don't know what to do in college. I am pretty terrible at everything I do, from video games, to volunteer work and driving. I was fucked from the day I was born.

>>15475
What's a respectable career? I think the expectation of success and related pressure greatly depends on the peer group you grew up in and your family background.

>>15475
>>15481
This is anti-natural selection behavior, so it will be hard to overcome, evolution has seen to that. I also wish I didn't feel the need, but feelings are fleeting. Meh.

>>15508
There's pretty of lone rogue males in other species. I think people are capable of it as well.

I thought I wanted to be some sort of scientist or engineer during high school and college.
And in middle and elementary school I wanted to be in the army because I wanted to kill people.
Then, when I was throwing out all my old shit, I found some stuff I wrote when I was little, and realized, the only thing that had ever motivated me was the desire for power. I literally wrote bluntly that I wanted power. I was fucking sick of being looked down on by my peers, my older brother, and my parents, who fucking hated each other. I never had any real interest in anything. Haruhidammit. I wanted to have an intellectual pursuit because I realized that they had power. By that time, I had forgotten the reason for my motivation. But now, it's clear. Anyway, now that I know I'm too fucking stupid and weak for any sort of power or respect, whatever. Fuck. Haruhidamn. I'll just live as shit, like I fucking am.

When i was little i wanted to be an Astronaut

>>15508
Man, we stopped been bounded by natural selection literally ages ago; don't tie your ethics to scientisms. I don't advocate classical cynicism either though.

>>15710
Even I have to admit, it would still be kinda cool to be an edgy, powerful supervillain with an inferiority complex.

>>15869
I think they made a movie with one not that long ago, I forget what it was called but a group of dumb teenagers get superpowers and the loner kid everyone picked on uses them to get revenge and become the villain.

>>15870
I think you mean Chronicle.

If so, I was pleasantly surprised by it. It was much better than I expected.

When I was a kid I wanted to be become a mech engineer and design shit for BMW or Porsche and test them in the green ring, or Haruhi dammit for WRC or Le Mans, I really had a passion back then. I had that dream until 17, then I realized I was too dumb for math and physics and that since I was born in a third world shithole I was aiming too fucking high. Now I want to become a sysadmin. and live a normal lonely life, im going to college for first time next year since I havent finished HS yet, im 22.

I have a bit less than a year to fix my shit and habits, lose weight, change appearance, maybe even move out with my mum. Of course if I attended in my current conditons I'd drop out in a blink. W-w-wish me luck guys.

When I was a kid I would reply that I want to become an astronaut.
I now, at best, aspire to become a bolt of a spacecraft.

When I was very young, I wanted to be an astronaut. As I grew older, I acquired the hobby of programming, and looked at that as a career path. In the last few reasonably functional months of my life, I wanted to be a psychopharmacology researcher.

I was an overachiever at school, until the age of 15, when shit happened that effectively knocked me out of education. I doubt that I shall ever go back.

From when I was around 13-14, I wanted to become a linguist, specializing in Japanese. When I started actually studying Japanese, I realized that I really liked helping people, and that I would like to be a Japanese teacher. People used to tell me I was good at explaining, and that I had a gift for languages. Eventually though I realized that I'm too much of a loser to ever achieve something like that. I graduated with my degree in Japanese, and am currently living as a NEET in Osaka. My current dream is that I'll have the balls to end my life before 2015.

A girl. A happy, successful woman with a decent job. that's all i ever wanted to be.

I've started medically transitioning from the age of 19. i think soon i'll achieve it.

i'm still terrified of people but i have a few friends now. i don't care if it makes me a 'traitor' or a 3d pig or whatever. i'm not going to be miserable and unhappy for the rest of my life. video games and anime stopped single-handedly satisfying me a year ago

>>16288
I wish I had it in me to go through with that. Best of luck to you.

>>16288

>video games and anime stopped single-handedly satisfying me a year ago

... Then why are you still here?

Don't get me wrong, I'm happy for you, I certainly have no problems with transitioning or anything of the sort. But if anime/video games don't do it for you anymore...

>>16288
Well, I'm openly misogynist and I would not consider you a traitor at all; because, by all means, you won't be a woman but something closer to a cyborg: a man who has radically altered and enhanced his body to meet his own expectations, with his faith and commitment put in the artificial to the point acknowledging gender and its roles as such.

So, rather, I salute you.

>>16290
It's the same thing for me, actually. And I'm certain that these types are common. Ones that don't find anything interesting, left to F5 imageboards and sleep their life away.

>>16288
Best of luck to you. I know how hard it is.

>>16292
Fuck. I know I'm one of them.

>>16288
Awful. Even if you follow through with it, you won't ever truly be female.
Between being a man and a pathetic disfigured mess that could hardly be called a "girl", the former sounds more viable.

>>15347
thx

When I was a kid I wanted to be a red fire truck. Not joking.