I recently read about Randy Pausch’s Last Lecture.
What’s your childhood dream, and why can’t you achieve it?
My childhood dream was to be a professional athlete. I was probably good enough athletically for baseball, and good enough to coach football.
What’s holding me back? For baseball, it was smoking. I started when I was 15. For coaching, nothing really except the opportunity.
How about you?
Be a professional dancer.
No money in it, a very stressful life, and it’s kind of dated by definition. I mean, I don’t think I’ll be able to dance when I’m fifty like I could when I was twenty.
I wanted to be an archeologist.
Then I found out it doesn’t really pay.
She is a dancer, or are you saying I could be an actress?
I’m trying to find out if “desire to achieve their dreams” equals “actually achieving their dreams.”
I wanted to be a writer. I wrote most of a novel when I was in the sixth grade, but the project sort of petered out when I didn’t know how to end it. I cranked out loads of short stories and poems too. Fortunately most of them have not survived (and I’ll exterminate the rest someday when we are going through Grandma’s possessions).
I guess I just don’t have anything to say.
Between the ages of 9 and 12, there was nothing I wanted more than a go cart.
I’m now 45. I still want a go cart.
I wanted to be a clinical psychologist. Instead, I married one.
Mmm. I write a lot. I am a fairly good writer. I don’t say this to flatter myself; I’ve had outside, neutral party commentary on how well I write. My problem is I love fiction and I suck at writing fiction.
I think I could write creative non-fiction, or travelogues, but it’s not easy to get into the world of writing.
Yeah, my dream now is to be a reader. Success!
I always wanted to be an Olympic athlete. Unfortunately, that’s not going to happen unless watching porn becomes an Olympic sport.
Walking on the moon.
Had I gone the NASA route it wouldn’t have/be happening.
I suppose if I had gone the Bill Gates route I MIGHT have been able to fund my own personal trip.
Seriously, I look up at the moon almost every clear night with both a sense of awe and “gawd damnitness”. My parents tell me my first word was moon.
Lucky assed Apollo bastards.
I wanted to be a paleontologist. Before I really understood that there weren’t tons of bones to find and they don’t make much money.
We grew up poor and one thing I knew from a very young age was that I wouldn’t be poor when I grew up.
Dream: I wanted to be an actor.
Excuse: I need to pay my rent and feed my children regularly. Like, several times a day! Can you believe it? Greedy little beggars.
But I think I’m going to start trying to do some local community based part time non-Equity kind of stuff. 'Cause why the hell not?
I wanted to be a war correspondent. I had this old 35mm camera and a vest with a lot of pockets and I’d run around playing correspondent.
Now I’m a foreign aid worker who specializes in conflict zones and probably drink more than is a good idea.
I wanted to be a ballerina. But while I love to watch ballet actual ballet lessons were so boring I begged my mom to let stop.
Dream: be a writer
Outcome: I’m starting to realize that, once you gain enough free time to write, your life becomes less interesting. Sitting in front of a computer for hours is probably the least stimulating activity imaginable. Also, managing your own work schedule is no piece of cake.
There was some joke that a stand up comedian told many years ago. “It’s a good thing that not everybody got to live their childhood dream. Imagine a world with nothing but firemen, cowboys, nurses, and ballerinas.”
I had a lot of them … astronaut, definitely. Sci-fi writer. Marine biologist. Astronomer. Computer programmer (those are just the pre-teen dreams). Didn’t have (and still haven’t found) the focus to pursue those that are still achievable.