From Pirate to Purpose: How Dreams Shape Our Careers

When I was very little, first going to school, people started asking me what I’d want to be once I was grown. I find it funny how often this question is associated with the classes you take, the sports you do, the electives you choose. That question seemed to pop up only in relation to the classroom. When I took journalism classes and photography, they asked “Well, what do you want to be?” and certainly when I competed in DECA, winning crappy bronze medals for coming in 4th in the state Sales competition. Youth should be a time for experimentation, and variation. And I feel we too firmly ask the new generations to pick their lane well before they even get to the highway.
But before all that. Before the public school system had its hooks in me. When I was very unaware of the world, and courses and real jobs, I answered I wanted to be a Pirate. I think my mother had the best response one could have. She didn’t tell me how that wasn’t a real job, that I was being silly. She told me about sailors, and the Navy. Merchant Marines and the like. She knew I didn’t just think Pirates were cool, even if I didn’t. She understood, on some level I craved adventure and freedom. Growing up in poor rural Ohio the ocean seemed as magical as any fantasy land did. The stories of pirates ignited my imagination and she saw that.
I think it was a wonderful thing. To not dismiss some childish ambition. I think her encouragement has helped me keep a sense of wonder in my works, and my studying. Obviously I would grow out of wanting to be a literal pirate, but my mother managed to preserve the core of my dreams.
Work should be more than just tasks done repeatedly. It’s creative expression, it’s the result of hours of study and focus, and it’s an extension of yourself. When I wanted to be a Pirate I didn’t want to cut throats, tie sails, and go without a bath for months at a time. I wanted that sense of adventure, of freedom, of chartering my own path on the sea. And it’s easy to see how that desire has influenced my work now. That desire for freedom and making a path of my own led me here, my business was cut from that same fabric. You may not be able to have your exact dream, but if you understand WHY you want it, you can certainly find something damned close.

[Funnily enough, my mother still lovingly refers to me as her pirate son. Although that may come from my long hair and beard, now.]

Daily writing prompt

When you were five, what did you want to be when you grew up?