I would be working as a chef, but that has nothing to do with Sz. Broke my back when I was younger and the amount of bending I can do in one day is limited. Lucky I’m walking at all and I have chronic pain from the injury. That is the career I could and would do if not for physical limitations.
The head circus took up residence in my mind when I was so young. I didn’t really have any ideas about growing up. I broke when I was 17 and barely passed high school.
But now that I’m here… I am very happy being a gardener / landscaper.
After I developed SZ I decided that the ability to give concise lectures and keep them interesting was one of the most challenging things you could do. So I guess a college professor of some kind. Math or physics or computer science.
Long time ago in Leningrad I was asked in Russian in one questionaire what I wanted to become, and in Russian I replied that I wanted to become the CEO of an international corporation. This was 1989 just six months before I went to the USA. Well, the short story is that I never became one.
I’m an engineer, but if time or money were no object to train-- I’d rather be an artist, or a psychologist specializing in talk therapies for people with sz.
I wish on this point that I had not gotten sick and run from getting an MFA in Creative Writing/Poetry. I could have been a Teachers Assistant and maybe be published in magazines and selling my books on amazon-maybe even being a poet laureate for the state or nation. At night, I dream big! I met Rita Dove before she won her Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. She had painted nails in purple and orange. It was a magical moment that I wrote in my journal. Damn the illnesses!