This is my take on Genie @ … in a Bottle’s 10th Living Out Loud project

I was never one of those people that always knew what they wanted to be when they grew up. I sorta muddled my way through, tried this and that, and, luckily, wound up with a career I currently enjoy.

Jobs I’ve actively pursued and/or seriously thought I might like (in rough chronologic order):

• aeronautical engineer: I wanted to design and build cool human-powered vehicles like Varna’s Diablo and MIT’s Daedalus, but I discovered very quickly that I was much more interested in (visual/industrial) design than thermodynamics and vector analysis
• 
• Army helicopter pilot: I thought semi-seriously about joining the Army to fly Blackhawk and/or Apache helicopters, but the whole dying/killing-for-my-country thing is not really my style
• bilingual something-or-other: back in the day, I thought maybe I could parlay my Japanese or Spanish into some sort of money-making endeavor…maybe teach English in Japan or something
• history professor: I graduated with a BA in history, so I thought I might eventually teach the subject, but I wasn’t accepted into the grad school of my choice, so I moved on
• librarian: data organization/retrieval seems sort of fun to me (I know, I am one wild and crazy guy!) and I enjoy research, so I thought I might like to be a reference/academic/corporate librarian or a private information broker or maybe work in a library-related IT field, but I discovered I enjoyed web design/development more than librarianship
• web designer/developer: I thought I would enjoy the combination of coding and visual design…and I do! Plus, the web is cool
• writer: I tried writing a novel and thought about writing for a tech blog, but I write v-e-r-y  s-l-o-w-l-y and dislike the idea of writing under a deadline

Jobs I’ve actually had (in rough chronologic order):

• data entry clerk: I worked part-time at my Dad’s office entering…*yawn*…data — it was a bit boring, but I liked the office atmosphere
• rent-house maintenance guy: I worked part-time for my Mom cleaning rent houses, mowing lawns, etc. — eh, not my cup of tea
• accounting assistant: my wife’s aunt got me a job in the accounting department of a direct-mail company — the owner once made me and another guy mop the warehouse floor…on Saturday!
• dj (intern): for one semester, I was an early-morning, university-radio dj — cool, but I didn’t like having to get up so early
• librarian (intern): for one semester, I interned as a librarian in the Texas Comptroller’s Office — the nail in the coffin for librarianship
• web designer/developer: for two years I worked at a boutique web design firm during the dot-com bubble (woohoo!), then the bubble burst (boohoo) — I’ve been a freelancer ever since