When I grow up

I wanted to be an astronaut.  I wanted to be a bug scientist.  I wanted to be a dog psychologist.  I wanted to be a bionic engineer.  Those all sound like fun jobs.  

I did not know about money.  I did not know that a job was required to survive.  And I never dreamed of an ordinary job.  And definitely not the wide variety of jobs I have worked over the past 2 decades. 

When I grow up, I wanna be a:

• Cattle brander
• County fair maintenance worker
• Waiter
• Chef
• Legal Secretary
• Computer repairman
• Shipping & receiving clerk
• Data entry clerk
• Telephone surveyor
• Call center manager
• Customer service rep
• Retail clerk for a liquor store, rock & roll apparel shop and flower shop
• Reports writer
• Software tester
• Project manager
• Parking Enforcement Officer
• Electronics salesman

I did not like olives, either.  They're black, shaped like eyeballs, have a fleshy texture when you bite into them and an unusual bitter-tart flavor I had never experienced.  After one nibble, I refused to ever eat one again.

And then someone showed me olive fingers!  What a fun experience to have squishy black finger tips to play with and then eat.  The flavor, shape and texture were the same, but now it was fun... which made it delicious.  This new and unexpected thing I had feared, became something I loved and ate 10 at a time!

Every job is an unexpected experience, but I always try to find ways to make it fun.  Like putting bitter-tart olives on my fingertips.

Here's an olive-finger work-related love story.

I love to hear about the unusual jobs other people have worked, too.  Please comment and tell me... what are the most unexpected jobs you have worked?

Aim for the sky!

"Swing higher!" I yelled.  "I heard if you swing high enough, you can swing all the way around!"

"That's impossible!" said Jake, "I heard a 5th grader swung too high and hit his head on the bars and died.  I'm not going to swing that high."

Yet, I kept swinging, higher and higher... until gravity caught up with me and I was jerked back towards the ground so violently it knocked the air out of my lungs.  And I tried again... and again...

Over 25 years later, I understand the reality of physics, but I still dream of swinging so fast that I can do a complete circle.  Just because a dream is nearly impossible to achieve, doesn't make me stop dreaming.  The risk, effort and expensive resources often put me in check... I could go swinging in a hurricane, build a swinging motor or buy a jet pack... but I don't want to fulfill my playground dreams THAT badly.


I firmly believe life is about the journey, not the destination, and constantly dream up new ideas.  The best ideas are often beyond my abilities or economics.  So, what do I do with such grand schemes?  I mentally file them away, right next to the stories of my grand adventures and my philosophical revelations.

One dream I've had, was to become a writer.  And not just writing legal documents, computer code or corporate documentation... I've done that.  I want to write something creative, entertaining, educational and personal.  And so be it.  My words shall flow into the internet, and some of them may manifest into fictional books.

I can do anything.  I can even ride my bike with no handlebars.