One of my favorite newsletters is from www.ITTYBIZ.com and today's entry "What Do I Do With My Life?" struck a cord.  So I want to tell you my side of the story.  
There I was at the beginning of the dot com boom and working with a mainframe.  A mainframe is a computer.  A really really big computer.  I was a supervisor and one of my tasks was to evaluate various pieces and parts for a brand new local area network or LAN.   
How I ended up in the computer field at all is still a curious question.  My degree was in Human Development.  I didn't even have a math class!  Computers were something for really super smart people in the late seventies, not me.  My friend's father always told us that computers were coming and that she and I should take a computer class while we were in college.  I carefully avoided any math classes and didn't take any science classes that were even close to computers.  Now I needed to learn about computers and figure out how to intelligently convince the powers above me that we needed to buy brand xyz.  
As I was researching, programmers would tell me that I should go back to school.  My manager told me to go back to school.  Everybody said that I should go back to school and get my Computer Science degree.  I thought long and hard about this and came to the conclusion that if I wanted to invest all that time in going back to school, why would I take computer science classes?  My tiny brain told me that if I were to invest all that time, that I should take something I would love to take.  Something that I would enjoy!  ART!
What to do with my life had to revolve around ART.  That is all there was and is to that.  Why would I pay for anything else?  What would be the point in learning something that I still have no desire to know about.  These are the types of questions to ask. 
 If I could do anything in the world, what would it be?  No barriers.  If I didn't have to worry about money, what would I do for a living?  What will drive me to get up in the morning and do something productive?  What will make a positive impact on the world as it relates to me?  How can I define and achieve my goals?   
This is a process that you can develop over time.  Define what you need to do with your life and then narrow it down until it is manageable - for you.  Don't make hasty decisions.  Learn from your mistakes.  Get on the internet and explore some possibilities.  Then re-evaluate.  Then define your next step.  Keep moving forward.  That's the key.  Move forward and do it for you.  
Thursday, April 9, 2009
Goals for My Life; What To Do With My Life
Posted by Lyn StClair at 1:46 PM
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