When you are 15: When I grow up, I want to be a teacher. A soldier. A college student. An executive. A doctor. A Lawyer. Rich.

When you are 25: When I grow up, I want to be happy. Successful. Rich. A mother. A father. A business owner. My own boss.

It’s funny how dreams and goals change as we get older. They become less fanciful, more practical. And I guess that makes sense. As we get older, we have a better grasp on how things work, on how the world really plays out, and it’s less a matter of being jaded, more a matter of being realistic. Pragmatic. And that’s a good thing, for sure. I mean, not everyone can be an astronaut or a fairy princess.

I guess I’ve just found myself thinking a lot lately about dreams and goals, and how to make them happen. It struck me as funny today how drastically different they are today than they were 5 years ago. 10 years ago. 20 years ago. Today, it’s graduate school, and a PhD, some day teaching as a professor. At some future date, I would also like to open a restaurant, or at least have a giant kitchen where I can cook lots of food for friends and family.

I once had dreams of being an engineer. Of developing weapons. Making things that protect some people and kill others. I don’t now know why I was so interested in that field, but that’s what I wanted to do. R&D development for GE. Now, I can’t even imagine doing that job. I realized that engineering would drive me nuts, and as for the weapons part, I cannot imagine myself building machines made to kill people. But that was the plan. The goal. The dream.

Now, I’d prefer to trade the lab coat for tweed, the calipers for a pen, and a lathe for a poem. And I’m okay with that.

What were some of your old dreams or goals that have now changed to better fit who you’ve become?

In other news, well, there isn’t a lot of other news. Eat, work, sleep. Lather, rinse, repeat. It’s such a drag sometimes, waking up every morning to do the same thing over and over again. Bells, beeping, screaming children. But like I wrote last saturday, it’s just a means to an end. Just a stepping stone on to something greater.

But I got to thinking even more about that. I suppose it’s more than a means to an end. It’s also a wealth of experience, not just on a resume, but also in terms of life. I have seen the bowels of society, but I’ve also seen people at their best. Helping others, being kind, and (above all) being gracious to those who don’t know better. And in the end, that’s more valuable than any of the money, and it really justifies all those bad days, all those days spent flitting from one irritating situation to another.

Those are, each of them, a part of who I am now. They will always be with me, even when I can no longer remember specifics. They will continue to inform my choices, my mannerisms, my whole being. Forever. They can either make me cynical or they can make me learn, and hope that maybe there’s something different. Or, for the good ones, they can make me aspire to be so selfless. Or so caring. Or so gracious.

Good bad, ugly, and soul-sucking. Everything counts, and everything affects your life more than you might realize, whether for good or ill. Even if it’s something as mundane as your days at work.

In any event, I’ve been setting my alarm for 6:30 every morning for the past couple weeks. This has allowed me some extra peace throughout the day, as I get my blogging done, I read up on blogs, and I make a few comments here or there. Then, I move on to working on this or that, whatever needs to get done. It’s really been pretty nice, even if it’s difficult to get up at such an ungodly hour.

But yesterday, I discovered something amazing about getting up with so much time to spend before having to get ready for work: naps. That’s right. Yesterday, I took a nap before 10AM. I did my usual thing, I got my chores done, then I had extra time! So I took a nap. From 9:00-9:30, I experienced that oft-hoped for nap that I hated so much when I was 5.

When I woke up, I felt refreshed and energized, ready to begin my day. Only, I had already begun my day! I had already accomplished a few tasks and was ready to move into the tedium of the day job. So. The moral of the story?

If you want to start your day off right, forget a big, full breakfast. Forget coffee. Get some stuff done, ZEN HAVE A NAP.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will admit that I grew up with money. For as long as I remember, there’s been no shortage of toys or food or entertainment, etc etc. However, I am aware that my family has not always been so fortunate, and my parents made many sacrifices and had many hardships early on in their marriage, as my father was trying to finish school and an MBA.

My father did not come into his money over night. It was earned through many years of hard work and even harder decisions. As a result, I was given every opportunity. I went to good schools, I went to educational summer programs, I was supported in my school work and given help whenever I needed it. This, then, resulted in a successful academic career. Sprinkled in there were a few jobs of my own, both with my father’s companies and with others as well.

I worked hard in these jobs, and I got my paycheck. This allowed me to get the things I wanted. Did I enjoy going to work? Not really. Who does? I mean, would you rather go to work or spend the day playing video games or whatever makes you happy? Of course not. That’s not to say, of course, that going to work was always a bad thing. Just, there are always more fun things to do.

In any event, I finished college in December of 2008. In case you weren’t aware, the economic world we had spent so long reveling in began to unravel, and property values, stock values, and jobs began evaporating. Faster, I bet, than most people could have expected (but I’m not economic expert). So, even though I dreamed of graduate school, I chose not to go. Instead, my fiancee and I got married. We settled into a little rent house, and I began a job search.

The goal wasn’t money. Not really. It was just a necessity of the world and culture we live in. The goal was to ride out the storm, and at the end, be in a position where the dream could be realized. We still aren’t there yet, but in my neck of the woods, the job market isn’t there yet either.

In the mean time, we have been able to purchase a home, take in a second dog, and live comfortably. I’m working in an industry I never expected to be in, and it’s certainly a far-cry away from English academics, where my heart and soul lie. But, it’s a means to an end. It allows me to stay out of debt, build up some meager savings, and prepare for a return to the dream that I’ve been chasing.

Money, then, isn’t some enemy. It’s a tool. And like any tool, it’s only effective if used correctly. Use the tool, don’t let the tool use you. Keep it all in perspective of your dreams and goals, and pursue money as a means to those ends. You may have to make a sacrifice or two along the way, but in the long run, as long as you refuse to be controlled by your money, your dreams are almost always attainable.

As we were talking, one of my coworkers looked him up on IMDB, and found out he died in 2003. “How?” one of my coworkers asked. “Says here, he died from injuries resulting from hanging himself.”

“Oh, so he killed himself,” one said. “Not necessarily. It just says he died from injuries from hanging himself, not that he killed himself.”

“Yeah,” I suddenly chime in out of nowhere, “it may have been auto-erotic asphyxiation.”

For some reason, everybody got all awkward after that.

Today while I was walking with some campers down to lunch, one little girl decided that she wanted to fill in her recently purchased (and severely misunderstood) day planner. She was happily putting little checks and exes in the boxes on the pages. Although she was, for a change, being quiet, she was walking more slowly, more slowly, more slowly. . . stopped.

I circled back, asked her to please put her little, pink book back in the bag and keep walking to lunch. She resisted, which I expected, so I politely had her hand it to me, and I put it in the bag. I also set the pen in the bag with it, and then she went ballistic.

“WAIT! WAIT! WAIT! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!”
“You can take it back out later, but now it’s time to get to lunch!”
“I know that, but my pen! MY PEN IS OPEN!”

Ladies and Gentlemen, let me tell you that to have failed to click the pen shut was the gravest of errors. Life and death may revolve around whether that pen lasts an extra day because it was clicked closed properly when laid in the bag. Nothing, not even lunch (about which this child is always especially excited), was more important than that pen being closed.

So this is my public service to you: Always remember to close your pens; your sanity may depend on it.

I did, however, get to see a rather funny moment at work today: ’round about time to go, I had been taking pictures in a camp that I wasn’t actually counceling for, so whenever the teacher for that camps says “all the other camps are lined up outside waiting for parents,” it wasn’t so much my problem that all the kids had their hands covered in a gooey mixture of cornstarch and water. But I did take great joy in hearing one of the councilors of that camp mutter very quietly as he passed, “Oh, God.”

Something about the look of sheer panic on his face at the sight of 12 5-7 year olds covered with this, well, goo, made my day a little brighter. Don’t get me wrong, I felt profoundly sorry for him, but I was able to enjoy the humor of that situation.