Follow your dreams.

At 62 and being of short lived Irish blood I know my time here is coming to an end and from time to time I think about it.
I think I think I did it right.

The normal route is to go through high school and either continue one's education and then start a career or start a career out of high school.

I took a different route. I decided to follow my dreams.

I had an early bad marriage and a false start but I decided to follow my dreams. I didn't settle until I was a few weeks shy of forty and I figure that was likely too damned young.

My mother didn't know what to make of it. My father was scared until shortly before he died but just before he died he made his peace with me and became proud that he had raised a son that had defied convention and was having the kind of life he wanted.

Over the period of twenty years I became the kind of man I had envisioned as a child and I'm damned glad I went this route.
To those of you that are in high school my advice is to follow your dreams. Do what is right and what your gut tells you. Swim upstream! Run against the wind!

There is always time to start a career and make money and after you decide to settle into a career you get to bring your past along with you.

When I got out of the army I left Fort Carson in a VW bug with 25 foot tipi poles strapped to the top and headed straight to the mountains. For the next fourteen months the tipi was home. I got to experience all four seasons in a tipi in the Rockies and I became a better person for the experience.

There were a lot of hands-on things I learned in the woods and I became a pretty good woodsman. All it took was hard work and planning ahead.

I took a break for a few months after I broke camp and sold the tipi. 

During that time I learned a basic trade. I learned to frame and finish houses.

After that it was time to live another childhood dream. I hitch hiked to Alaska and lived that dream. That was followed by ten years of life on Kodiak Island where I commercially fished and built houses for an income.

When I took a job or embarked on an adventure I never asked if it was dangerous. I always asked if it was interesting. I suppose this attitude like to about kill me any number of times it was sure satisfying.

It was one hell of a dangerous twenty years and there were a lot of people like me that didn't survive. After the tipi it was a series of boats and a lot of time in small airplanes. One day my instincts told me to stop winter fishing and I did. Shortlly after the boat rolled up into a ball and killed the entire crew.

Still, to a young, adventuresome guy getting out of high school I'll say follow your dreams while you are young enough to.

There's time to have a career.

I didn't even start my present career until I was almost 40. It took me about a year to get promoted to the job I wanted to work at. I still love it.

During the twenty years of adventuring a lot of people I grew up with warned me that I never would have anything if I didn't buckle down. 

The interesting thing is that when I bought my house on a 30 year note I had it paid off in under a decade. A lot of the very people that warned me were still paying on theirs.

The thing I always seem to hear is that someone is going to buy a boat when they retire and sail around and do things. The truth is generally a lot different. By the time a person retires they generally do not have either the health or the drive required. Health issues also come along in later years.

There's more than one guy out there that worked for the retirement payoff only to have his health cheat him from his dreams.

At 62 I would be pretty hesitant to start and spend an entire year in a tipi. I simply don't have the energy I did in my 20s.

Lord knows I don't have what it takes to fish anymore in the Bering Sea. Time has taken its toll and fishing is a young man's game. I knew skippers that fired people on their 35th birthday for Pete's sake!

I have heard a lot of people my age say that youth is wasted on the young and maybe that has a grain of truth to it but that's the way it is. The best thing I have found is to take advantage of your youth while you are still young and do those things you dreamed of as a kid. You won't get any younger.

There's something to be said for entering old age with a fairly empty bucket list.

Maybe this attitude isn't for everybody, but it sure worked for me.
Follow your dreams!


To find out why the blog is pink just cut and paste this: http://piccoloshash.blogspot.com/2009/12/my-feminine-side-blog-stays-pink.html NO ANIMALS WERE HARMED IN THE WRITING OF TODAY'S ESSAY