Since renaming my blog Career Muse, I've become increasingly concerned that I haven't posted anything that even remotely qualifies as musing.  My thoughts have been far too focused and orderly, my topics have been much too centered on practical advice and reasonable issues, and my very language has been way too logical and structured.  I vow to do better, to meander more in my writing, to be more impractical, and to venture into the realm of the ambiguous more frequently. 

So, as a first, small, tentative step, let's wander around in the area often occupied by individuals who are grappling with the question... "What do I want to be when I grow up?" Not in the literal sense, although that would certainly be a huge departure, but in the sense of being faced with a major, perhaps unanticipated, and perhaps unwanted, career decision. Since I'm a big fan of having dreams, no matter at what age or life-stage, my initial response is to suggest that we should look to our deferred dreams; things we always wanted to do, places we always wanted to visit, people we always wanted to meet, but never did so, because we were too busy working or could not imagine how our dreams could financially sustain us. For some individuals, early dreams are now in the realm of the possible, and a change in employment status is just the impetus we need to make a dream a reality. 

One of my earliest and most wonderful dreams first happened when I was about 8 years old, playing in my back yard.  I was sitting in the grass and looked up to see an airplane roaring through the sky on its way to somewhere fabulous and enticing. I vividly recall watching it until it became a speck and then disappeared.  I also vividly recall thinking that I didn't care where it was heading - I just wanted to be on that airplane on the way to an incredibly astounding adventure. 

For the next several months I literally pestered everyone around me with questions about airplanes and travels and faraway places and other cultures and other languages and peculiar foods.  I even pestered my father to help me understand how airplanes could actually fly; and best of all, he told me about his very first airplane ride in a small open cockpit plane in such engaging detail that I literally held my breath when he described flying through the open air. Naturally I wanted to go do that right away, but I think the idea of an 8-year old in an open cockpit plane terrified my parents and would probably have had the same effect on the pilot. 

But the dream persisted, and I flew on my first commercial flight from Boston to Chicago when I was about 20 - I waited a long time - and I loved it.  Over the next few decades I was very fortunate to travel the world and have  flown around the globe twice, a real dream come true.  Yes, many people have racked up millions of air miles.  I am not unique in that experience.  But perhaps what is unique, or at least unusual, is that I still feel exactly the way I felt when I sat in the green grass and looked up at the blue and cloudless sky that day, and I still have that sense of wonder and adventure on every trip I take. 

To those who are trying to determine what they want to be when they grow up, and especially to those who may have the chance to make a change in their life paths or careers, my advice is to think about what made you dream, what made you smile, what made you want to run right out and do something when you were 8 years old; and build on that dream.  Perhaps not always knowing where the airplane is heading is a good thing.  Astounding adventures abound, if we are open to them.