When I got my VCE results almost one hundred years ago (in 2000), I had two goals: to be imminently drunk, and to do something that would become a “real job”. As the eldest child of university graduates and impressive overachievers, there was no question in my mind of doing anything silly like “something I loved” or “following my dream”.
I wanted to be a writer. Of course I did; I had been writing about my feelings since I was little, and English was the only subject that gave me anything resembling academic pleasure. But writing was, as far as I knew, a pretend job. A good way to spend every month scrounging for coins between couch cushions to put food on the table.
That’s a reasonable assessment, by the way. Writers in Australia earn just $18,200 annually, on average, from their writing, which falls wildly short of the poverty line.
So, I enrolled in a business/arts double-major degree instead and, while I was in the process of flunking out of that, I became a web developer. I wasn’t a great or even a good web developer but it meant I could get a reliable job in a government department and get paid more often than never. For almost 15 years I web developed. I hated it.
I was in my 30s by the time I managed to follow my dream. The first time I wrote words in exchange for money I thought I would expire from happiness but it took much longer than that to consider it a real job. People would ask me what I did for a living (after they had asked, being Melbourne, what school I went to) and I would say “writer”, then qualify my answer by explaining the nature of the writing and my past life as a web developer. Being a writer felt like an excuse to never fully evolve into an adult human. It still does, a little.
This year my younger child finished VCE and those feelings came to a head. They have always been an artist. Their early art included masterpieces like “the poo and wee fairy” and hundreds of My Little Pony characters. Over the years I’ve watched awestruck as they practised, experimented and refined their style, creating commissions to earn money to buy a better drawing tablet or to print a zine. They were about 11 when they told me they dreamed of being an artist. Like, as a job.
My instinct was to gently insist on a fallback plan. What about being an artist on the weekends but a psychologist during the week? How about an accountant who draws portraits of clients to submit with their BAS? I already have a pretend job; I can’t afford to support your pretend job, too!
But as I watched their art develop I realised two things: first, that they’re actually good at it; and second, fuck it.
Both of my children were part of the class of Covid, finishing school in 2021 and 2022. They’re those kids who had to learn complex mathematics and create spectacular artworks while leeching data from a parent’s hotspot because five people were connected to the home internet, if they were lucky enough to have it. In our house, it’s been a kind of method learning: studying US politics and the spread of disease while society threatens to collapse around them. It feels, without hyperbole, like trying to start a career at the end of the world.
And so I realised that I wanted my kid to be an artist.
Why not follow your dream through the apocalypse? What’s the worst that can happen – you won’t be able to retire? Your electricity will cost more than a car? You’ll lose your paintings when the warming sea envelops your home? Welcome to literally any iteration of your future. Being a middle manager at a bank won’t change that a lick.
Obviously this comes from a position of extraordinary luck. Capitalism will probably eke out a few more decades as we slowly boil to death in our ozone prison. But this impending reality has put me squarely on Team Dream-Following, if at all possible.
Every year fully hundreds of people write an article about how their Atar meant nothing in the end. Changing careers is common, even expected. High school students are slammed by well-meaning adults reminding them that what happens now doesn’t matter, there are so many pathways, they don’t have to decide everything right now. I’m thinking even further ahead than that. Your Atar doesn’t matter because climate change and deep recession are great equalisers.
Do VCE students read midlife Guardian Australia columnists? I do not know. But if you’re out there, heart racing about the text message Monday will bring, let me say this: I hope the end of the world is your time to shine.
