Verbatim

"I can’t think when they, or I, might have surmised I’d actually made any sort of a choice. It all must have looked, to anyone observing (especially parents), like a series of negative choices. Not choosing to continue post-secondary education, not choosing some other obvious skill set. I appeared unmoored and shiftless and directionless and probably extremely unhappy." 

Ken Babstock explains how others saw his "career choice" to be a poet.