Not An Optometrist

When I was little, my parents tried to encourage me to pursue all these really high paying jobs when I grew up. They weren’t fussed about what I did as long as I started earning enough money to keep me comfortable and put them in a good retirement home when the time came. They told me I could be an accountant, veterinarian, doctor, optometrist or actress, but they advised against becoming an actress as I got older. Once I finished high school I decided I wanted to be an accountant, and so I went to university and studied accounting and now you guessed it, I’m an accountant. 

I often wonder what it would have been like if I had chosen to become a paediatric optometrist or something obscure like that. Would I love working with children and helping them see better? Or would I wish I had chosen a boring, non-customer facing job like an accountant? Life really is about sliding door moments and although I do find myself wishing that I’d chosen a different career for myself, maybe I would’ve felt that way even if I hadn’t become an accountant. 

Whenever I go to the optometrist to get my eyes checked, I always ask a lot of questions. I can’t help myself. Some sick part of me wants to know what I’m missing out on and whether people my age who took the road not taken for me are happy with their choices. From what I can tell, working as an optometrist in Bayside is an extremely likeable career. Apparently, optometry is one of the best things you can get into because of the work balance. You can’t take your work home with you because physically you can’t take other people’s eyes home, and you make a lot of money.

I think I may have made the wrong career choice.