What do I want to be when I grow up?

I remember growing up wanting to be a bunch of things. I wanted to be a doctor, until mom asked me to take a big ol' splinter out of her finger. I remember even wanting to be Santa Clause. Little did I know....

Anyway, Now that I am to old and have too many commitments to really change my career path I have been thinking about what I would rather be doing. I think I would be good at sales thought I really would not want to make a living at it. I think I would make a good teacher, or at least I would have before I had so many kids and my patience was warn thin. In fact I would have loved to be a High School Band director. Now I know I never had the musical talent to pull that off but I envy, in many ways, not all, the boys HS band director. He gets to create music. Not just music now, in the present, but music for generations to come. I attribute my kids enjoyment and success in music, at least in part to Mr. Watts, My Junior High School Band teacher. We didn't push the kids to play instruments but I think they saw how much I enjoyed messing around on my trumpet and wanted to be a part of it.

I digress.

I got into Computers, in large part because of my High School Computer teacher. I am not sure of his name, sadly, (Alfred something...It will come to me) but I can picture him. Because of his class I went to school with the intention of going into computer engineering. You know, designing the next generation computers etc. Well I won't go into how difficult an engineering degree is but needless to say I soon decided computer science would be fine; I still would be creating new programs that would make life easier, and the world a better place. I know, we all have naive view of the world in college don't we? Alas here I sit mopping up after other folks messes, attempting to defend the integrity, if not the intent of the software I am responsible for. Creating new and wonderful things? Well no. That, it seems is left up to the young pups. The ones who come to me when things don't work. I still am trying to make the world a better place. After all where would we be if there were no telephones eh? I know, quieter, less rushed. But the phone system, in general does serve mankind. For what it's worth, it facilitates local and global communications.

Ideally I would like to be working where I can more directly be a positive influence on kids. That kind of job produces something that will not be obsolete after a year. I guess that is why Karen and I became so involved in Scouts and why I coach kids soccer. Of course I could not make a living at those things either. So perhaps I will have to be happy doing what I can do to keep the idiots that run Nortel Networks, the company I work for, in line and convince them to do things the right way. I will just have work with kids as a hobby.