Childhood Dreams

A coworker lent me an audio tape of The Last Lecture today. I listened to the first disc as soon as I got home. For those of you who are not familiar with the book, it’s about a professor who is asked to give the last lecture of his life. What would he want to say to the world if that was the last time that he could share his experiences and wisdom. The catch? It really IS his last lecture. He is dying of pancreatic cancer. In his lecture, he talked about realizing your childhood dreams. Things you’ve always wanted to do, but got swept under the rug by more important things. Things that excite you, that make you feel alive. Dreams that were just part of your imagination. So naturally, it got me thinking about my childhood dreams…. As I mulled over it, I remembered some of them. I always wanted to be a businesswoman, just like my mom. But I wanted to be even more successful. I wanted to be the CEO of a hugely successful company. I imagined myself at the head of a long table with people on either side of me, discussing the operations of the company. I also remember being insanely good at jigsaw puzzles. I especially loved the wooden ones. Oh how I loved playing with those! As I grew up, I continued enjoying all kinds of puzzles, from jigsaws to word puzzles. It would be a dream come true to join a puzzle competition of some sort.

When I was in high school, my eldest sister introduced me to crossword puzzles. I devoured them like crazy! She had a book of crosswords and I would finish numerous crosswords in one day. It didn’t matter that I didn’t know some of the answers. I tried my best to fill it in as much as I could, and when I gave up in the end, I would look up the answers in the back. And I learned that way. As you can imagine, I finished that book in no time at all, and it didn’t take long before I started buying crossword puzzle magazines. My favorite ones were ones published by Dell. To this day, I still enjoy their magazines, and if I could contribute to their magazine one day, or visit their headquarters, that would just be awesome.

Towards the latter part of high school, I dreamed of writing a book and being published. I also dreamed of becoming a magazine editor. There’s something about the written media that attracts me. Even now, I enjoy reading and writing. I used to write and read a lot more, but that’s something I’m working on right now. So here I am. Starting this blog. Taking a step towards that direction. What about you? What are your childhood dreams? Are you working towards them? I wanna hear your stories.