When I was a precocious little preschooler, adults always used to ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up. At first, I would say the usual things: “a doctor” or “a fireman” or “the president.” At some point, however — much to my father’s delight — my standard answer became “a scientist!”

I’d never actually met a scientist, but I knew what they did from watching TV. Scientists spent the day in a laboratory, surrounded by oddly shaped glassware containing various liquids. From among these liquids, they would choose two or more to mix together. Sometimes the mixing required an elaborate patchwork of tubes, wires, and flames. More often, however, the scientist would simply pour the selected liquids into a test tube or beaker and stir them with a glass rod. And then — magic would happen! Something entirely new would be created, something the world had never seen before. I could imagine no more satisfying way to earn a living.

A few months after this idea took hold, I suddenly realized there was a problem with it. I went to my father and asked, “When a scientist mixes chemicals together, isn’t it dangerous? What happens if the stuff in the beaker explodes?”

He calmly assured me that there was little danger of an explosion. “The scientist already knows what the chemicals are,” he said. “He has a pretty good idea of what’s going to happen when he puts them together. So if there was a chance that a certain combination of chemicals might explode, the scientist would be very careful. He’d probably start out by mixing very small amounts, and he’d use special equipment to protect himself.”

My father meant this to be reassuring, but to me it was utterly deflating. As a scientist, I’d already know what the colored liquids are? I’d be able to predict what was going to happen when I mixed them? Then what’s the point of mixing them at all? Where’s the joy of discovery? Being a scientist suddenly lost all its appeal.

Interestingly, I have no memory of any career fantasies after that. As I grew up, I lacked any vision of what I wanted to be as an adult. This condition lasted all through college. As a graduating senior, I went to the Career Services office for help in figuring out what sort of job I should look for. I took the standard battery of aptitude, personality, and interest tests, with no clear conclusion or direction. The career counselor, defeated, finally said to me, “Have you considered seeing a psychotherapist?”

Amazingly, I’ve made it to retirement without ever having had a real career. I always had a knack for assessing whatever skills I had and then finding a way to get someone to pay me to use them. I treated any employment I had as an opportunity to learn new skills, and then used those skills as a step toward doing something else. Over the course of my adult life, I’ve been hired to work as a writer, editor, producer, actor, animator, designer, composer, web developer, photo retoucher, and community college professor. I had no formal training in any of those things, but somehow I managed never to starve. Looking back on it, though, my life much more resembles my father’s version of a scientist than that of my childhood imagination. I always carefully assessed what seemed possible, what the likely outcome would be of trying this or that, and how to protect myself if anything bad happened. The people who follow a conventional career path are the ones I find amazing. When someone says, “I want to become an X,” and then invest years and money into learning how to be an X, and then they come out at the end and they’re an X, I wonder how that was possible. How did they reach such certainty about what they really wanted to do? How did they know that they really had the capacity to be good at it? How did they know that their investment was going to pay off financially? In other words, how could they have embarked on that path without knowing how it was going to turn out? For me, that seems like the equivalent of mixing chemicals together and seeing what happens. I have nothing but respect for the people who do it.