Wednesday, June 11, 2003

Todays thought: Career paths.
I hate the thought that I am now 31 years old, and I still don't know what I want to do with my life. Well, thats not completely true; there are ALOT of things I want to do, but I just don't have the stick-to-it-iveness to pick one. My whole life has been this way, mostly. Career-wise, let me recap all the things I've ever wanted to do, then crapped out on. From first ercollection, I wanted to be a drummer. Got myself a drumpad and sticks as a birthday gift long ago, when I was like 7 or 8. Never really bothered with it, because I wanted to play drums, not beat a piece of rubber glued to a hunk of wood. My next interest was singing (I come from a musical family). I had sung in the chorus in elementary school, and sang in the church choir, even getting myself some solos there. That was a great feeling. Then puberty came, and I have not liked my singing voice ever since. I mean, I enjoy singing, I just don't like to hear myself. Monica says I have a beautiful voice but then, she's biased. Took piano lessons for a couple years around age 12; but I never took it seriously enough to have been a concert-quality pianist. I do, however, have a pretty good ear, and I can play by ear pretty well. My nephew Dominic flatters me by telling me he doesn't know anyone who can play by ear as well as I, and he is turning out to be quite the musician. He plays sax, bass, and guitar, might be something else in there too.

Anyways, in 6th grade is when my interest in computers really got piqued. I eventually got a Commodore 64 and spent most of my free time on it. I wanted to be a computer programmer, coding games and such. Even started to go to school for it, but I hated the school. But thats a different story. Meanwhile, I had taken Tae Kwon Do for 7 years and achieved candidate for black belt (Brown belt with 2 black stripes). That seems to have been one of the things that has made me feel most alive. I think if I could remember it all, I'd start practicing again, just to get back in shape. But in case you hadn't gotten it yet, I lack motivation. So now I have a new career I'd like to pursue, which is building computers. Well, not just building them. I want to design them, like selecting the components that would best fit whatever needs a particular person had. I guess maybe that would be a custom designer. I dunno. But here I am stuck in this mostly dead-end job, with large bills to pay and no money for proper schooling. I'm seriously considering getting that Matthew Lesko book about government grants and whatnot. You DO know Matthew Lesko, right? The guy with the goofy question mark suits, the riddler-wannabe?

I guess it finally comes down to picking something and making the commitment to it. Its just really hard; playing music, martial arts, building computers. Playing music would definetly soothe my soul and make me more mellow, as I am WAY more uptight and tense than I used to be ( I think Tony was right... tick tick tick...), martial arts would do that on a slightly lesser scale, and get me in shape again somewhat, unless the Meniere's disease starts to say"nuh-uh!", and building computers would just satisfy the techno-junkie in me, and hopefully earn me many $$$ in the future, and then I can afford to join a gym and get back in shape. I'd love to be combine all 3, but how would that work? A martial srtist that sings songs about building computers? A musician that plays makes money with computer parts, and then breaks them with his pinky? Or perhaps a computer tech that karate chops his parts together with one hand while hammering out Billy Joel on the piano with the other? Scary thoughts, all of them...