Confidence

So in 28 years of life, I've wanted to be....

• an architect
• a geologist
• a tarot reader / psychic
  
• the owner of a gem and mineral store
  
• a professional musician (tuba or voice)
• a cartographer / GIS technician
  
• an accupuncturist
• a traffic engineer
• a landscape architect
• a Feng Shui consultant
• a transportation planner
  
• a community designer
• a politician (very briefly, thank all the gods)
  
• a developer
• a farmer / urban farmer
  
• a sci-fi fantasy writer
• a graphic designer
• a folk singer
  
• a food activist
• a community organizer
  

.... and I ask myself, "what the hell?" My interests are all over. I wish I could just focus on one thing, but my mind craves doing different things to keep my interests. I enjoy making people happy and smile. I enjoy alone time. I enjoy being outdoors. I enjoy being behind a computer. I enjoy flexibility with my time. I enjoy working with my hands and my body. I enjoy sitting back and thinking. I enjoy writing.

Right now I work for the government, and that is fine. I like my hours, salary, benefits, and coworkers. I'm even allowed to be somewhat creative and progressive. But, like a good friend of mine, I have this feeling that I'm spending my life living for someone else. I want to live for myself.

What is a career anyway? Can "being myself" be a career? I would love to be an independent contractor, but I asking for money is difficult for me. Let me be frank with myself: I mysticize the exchange of funds from client to contractor to disempower myself from facing my fears of inadequecy. I am afraid I'm not good enough to get paid for the work I do. And the catch? There isn't even a "work" that I am doing to be afraid to ask for the money (kudos if you can follow that twisted psycho-logic).

So to empower myself. Starting small seems like good common sense. Pick something to do that gets paid per hour and start doing it informally. Then, as word gets out, make a transition to start doing it formally. The question is, what to do? I don't have enough confidence in anything I do to ask someone to give me money. However, it seems likely that the deficiency isn't in my skills, but moreso my confidence is deficient.

So I have two tasks ahead of me:

1. Become more confident then. I'm open to suggestions on how to do this.
2. Choose something to do as a contractor.