Do you remember what you wanted to be when you grew up?

As kids we’re taught to follow our dreams, but as soon as we grow up we’re told to get serious, get a job, start making money. It isn’t long before dreams take a backseat to life. For a while, you think you’ll come back to what you love. Spend a few years getting a degree, building up your resume, making some good money, and then you’ll get back to what you really want to do.

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For me it was photography and design. I spent three years in high school learning about aperture and depth of field, Prismacolors and tapestries. There was writing too. My favorite classes were English, my favorite pastime (even then) reading. There’s a letter I wrote to myself, to be opened when I turned 25, that suggested I would become a photojournalist. I imagined it was the best way to combine two of my passions.

IMG_4388When I started college the year after graduating high school, my classes were heavy with these three subjects. That first year was the best and most interesting of my college years. I lugged around an old Canon camera my aunt gave me, its lenses and boxes of film packed carefully into a camera bag my dad bought me. I learned about art history and how to draw profiles and combine themes. As always, my English classes were my favorite.

But then I started working, and by my second year of college, I distinctly remember saying to myself, “I better gear my education toward my career.” Just like that, I’d decided my first job would become my career, and my focus became business. I never took another art or photography class again, and I didn’t return to writing until I was in my late 20s.
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The irony is that I never liked math. I was always scared of it and confused by it. Yet I ended up majoring in finance and spending 14 years in banking. Rather than spending that time doing what I loved, I spent it doing what I’d decided was necessary for success and financial independence.

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Fast forward sixteen years since those days in high school, when I’d revel in the technique of feeding film onto a reel I couldn’t see and developing pictures in a dark room (yes, we still used actual film and enlargers back then), and I’m right back where I started. I’ve left banking and finance behind, since those things were never part of who I am, and I’ve returned to my first loves. It sure took a long time, but I’m happy I found my way back.

People talk a lot about first loves, but they’re usually referring to romantic love. What about the first time you felt love for something you were doing? Mine was taking pictures, drawing designs, and writing stories. Maybe for you it was riding a horse or swinging a bat. Maybe it was camping outside in nature or getting lost in RPG video games.

Whatever it was, try to remember it, and ask yourself if it still has a place in your life. If the answer is yes, then do everything you can to find your way back to it.

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