finding that brilliant idea…

I can’t believe it’s been over a year since I made a blog post on here. Actually – I can.  It seems like I never have much spare time, and I don’t even have any kids yet to blame it on. Fortunately, I’ve got a four day weekend so I have a few minutes to put down a thought or two.

I went to my cousin’s graduation last night and there were some major moments of déjà vu. From the uncomfortable bleachers in the gymnasium to the mauve, maroon and grey color scheme in the halls, my high school days came flooding back from beneath the eighteen years of other memories that had been heaped upon them. I always liked high school. For most people, your entire childhood is spent with one clearly definable goal – graduation.

The real question is – what then? Guidance counselors were always interested in what you thought you wanted to do for a career and then focused on getting you to apply to the best schools that they thought you could get in to for that career path. Many of us are going to change careers a number of times in our lives, so is that really the best approach? In retrospect, I think a better holistic picture would have been to ask how I wanted to live my life not just what I wanted to do for my first job. I can’t recall anyone asking me in high school if I wanted to stay in this area or move, how important was it for me to be a part of the local community, what were my priorities in balancing work and family, how old did I think I would be when I had my first child? My gut feeling is that those are probably not politically correct topics for school administrators to discuss with kids, and that family and religious influences are expected to pose those philosophical dilemmas to high schoolers.  Or maybe somebody did ask me those questions and I didn’t pay enough attention.

At any rate, I never was very religious, my family was very interested in the discussion of career, and if someone else had raised these issues I didn’t take notice, so I graduate from high school with my next goal – graduation? Very few people live their lives by a set of clearly defined goals or plans. By the time you graduate from high school, you are probably very established in your attitude toward planning and setting goals. I think my life would have turned out much different if I had thought more about life goals instead of just career goals that first year of college. Not better, not worse – just different.

These thoughts began to coalesce when I came to the realization that some of the kids graduating were the children of people that I had gone to high school with. Their lives had very quickly moved down the path that took them to a family while mine has nonchalantly meandered in that direction. Was that my biological clock that just ticked?

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It’s interesting how many times we completely overlook things until they are brought to our attention. I never noticed mobile offices or storage containers on jobsites until I started working for a company that specializes in those products. Now I see mobile offices and storage containers everywhere.

Last weekend, I went and got a haircut – not a terribly extraordinary event, but it started a series of weird coincidences that underscored this idea. I was sitting in the waiting area at Heads and Tales barber shop in my home town and noticed an autographed picture of astronaut David Wolf. It read something like, “To the guys at Heads and Tales for the best hair cut on Earth.” I thought, that’s pretty cool, I wonder what David Wolf has been doing since his space mission. I remembered his first space flight being a pretty big deal since he was form Indiana but couldn’t remember hearing or reading anything about his career after that.

Tuesday evening, I was on the north east side of Indianapolis for a training class. I was driving down 82^nd street and happened to notice that I was driving over the Astronaut David A. Wolf Bridge.

Wednesday morning, I’m going back across the Astronaut David A. Wolf Bridge heading in for day two of Salesforce admin training while listening to Bob and Tom talk to Dr. David Wolf about his upcoming space flight.

I’ve been in that barber shop at least 100 times, probably saw that picture on most of those visits, but never really paid attention to it. There’s a blog post in there all about repetition and using different media to market, probably ties in Burger King’s campaign, “where you were when you first heard about BK ribs,” and at least a paragraph about chipotle.

After hearing the interview on Bob and Tom, I did some research on astronaut David Wolf. Most of the movies and TV shows that I like revolve around space travel so astronauts rank high on the list of people I find interesting. Astronaut and doctor David A. Wolf – brilliant.

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