What DO I want to be when I grow up?

This is from a conversation I had with a friend about my life and where it is headed.

Anyone out there have any ideas? Suggestions?

Me: yeah, I've been thinking about your question about why thirty seems significant, or frightening, for that matter. It's not because I am not married or having babies -- those things, if they are to come, I don't think are meant to come quite yet. It is more this issue of whether I can keep struggling away at a career field that will never be secure or lucrative, and the fact that I have no idea what I'd pursue instead, or how I'd even go about pursuing it.

And if that means I'm "giving up". Or if it means I am finally being realistic.

I would like the option of having babies someday, and at the rate I'm going financially, that will never be possible. Because it also seems smart to set up a life where, if completely necessary, I could manage a way to have them on my own (not literally, but figuratively). I thought I should figure out how to do that a long time ago, and I've just not been willing to make life changes to make that possible. And maybe I don't know how to make those life changes anyhow.

Yeah, so that's thirty.

Friend: Understandable. Wanting to feel financially stable but worrying that you haven't gotten a steady, stable career in place making it possible? (B) is having the same set of questions hit him now. He's still doing film-related stuff but sooner or later may soon have to get a steady day-job, unless some serious break materializes. Well: seems to me that there are lots of interesting jobs you could do that wouldn't close the door to directing. There's lots of (or some) theater education, which I'm sure you'd be great at--and could keep directing at the same time. There's arts administration, which is far less exciting but also would keep you close to the kind of work you care about without seeming like a fish-or-cut bait choice. Or are you considering a fairly dramatic (no pun meant) turn away from theater altogether? If you're like me, lots of this was stirred up when you spent time around your friends from home.

Me: Yes, yes, yes and yes. All of those things. Not sure about staying in the world, or trying to find another world all together. It's been so familiar for so long, I kind of think I don't know much about anything else.

I have a decent year lined up next year (artistically, again - not financially) so I don't feel right pulling out now, but maybe I should plan for the year after that.

Planning was never my strong point though.

And I'm not sure how much I am willing to give up. (T) described being a corporate lawyer as "Painful and horrible for the first two years, and after that you just become numb". I don't think I could do that -- with anything, not necessarily law.

I don't know.