Years ago, for a college class reunion, I filled in a long and boring questionnaire, and the only question the has stuck in my mind was: What are your retirement plans?
I answered that I didn't intend to retire.
After all, I'm self-employed, I'm pretty much in control of my own time, and until I forget the languages I use, why shouldn't I keep translating? I like it fairly well, I like being paid for my efforts, and I like knowing that I'm providing a useful service for my clients.
Recently a lot of work has been coming my way, almost more than I can handle, and I'm ambivalent about it. It's flattering that people want me to work for them, and I've always been the kind of person who does his assignments before doing what he may feel like doing.
Having work that someone else has asked me to do also saves me from the dilemma of deciding what to do with my time. But I'm a bit haunted by the fear that I'll never get around to doing what I want to do, and that maybe I'll never quite figure out what it is that I want to do.
Anyway, the question of what a person wants is one that can only truly be answered in retrospect. What you wanted is what you actually did.
So if I'm taking on a lot of obligations - recently a publisher asked me to translate a 500 page book - that must be a sign that I want to do it. I could have said no. I could have said I have other plans. I could have said that I'm retiring as a translator. But I said, gee, if this important publisher wants me to translate this major book, how can I turn it down?
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