Childhood Dreams

Randy Pauch's last lecture was a required reading this week in class. Achieving your childhood dreams. As a child I don't recall having dreams of working at x company or becoming x profession.The only drive I was born with was the drive to find the true church. That is story for another day. It's a good one too.

My dreamless childhood wasn't because I had a hard life, it was because I was living the dream. I was raised by a single mom and during the summers my brother and I would be placed in YMCA day care while she worked. To say I thrived is a little bit of an understatement. I loved it! We'd travel all over Southern California and did it all, the beach, theme parks (all of them), skating, swimming. We even toured a city water treatment plant. I adored every waking minute. Once summer was over I would, what my mom called hibernate, until summer again. To this day I still smile when I smell summer coming. (yes, in May, in California there is a scent in the air. I now know it's a sent of fog but a scent non the less.) As I grew up I started working for "the Y." I've had just about every job a youth could have, lifeguard, swim teacher, after school site manager etc. I worked for them until 10 years ago. At that point I was engaged and as much as I loved working for the Y it didn't pay the bills we were about to incurred so it was time to move on. I was OK with it actually. It was time to move on and I, a new member of the church, had a different mind set.

He're I am 10 years later focusing on an assignment to come up with a new dream. From my childhood all I did was play. It's my first instinct. Like Peter from "Office Space" dream was to do nothing mine would be to play all day, and travel the world. I looked high and low for a job that did that but so far no luck. Although now that I have a home and a family I don't really want to go far unless they could go with me. It's funny how things change.

Randy Pauch accomplished a lot of his childhood dreams. His analogy of hitting the brick wall summed it up. The wall isn't there to stop you but to show how much you want things.

Dreaming helps launch us, it's vital. One can't go into space, let alone the market, without a launch. Where do I want to be launched next? Going back to school has been a dream for the last 15 or so years. That dream has started to take off. I'm finishing up my first year at BYUI. I only have 4 more years to go. Yay!

Future dreams, you may ask. To have fun, enjoy life, and of course, play.