Starry nights were the norm for my childhood. A night filled with stars was taken for granted: it was always there. Lying on our backs in the grass on cool evenings was a sensory delight for my brother and me. This was my introduction to the North Star, the Milky Way, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper, and a few galaxies. My brother seemed to know everything, and I attributed that to his being a year my senior. Yet, the idea that the starlight my brother and I were viewing had been created millions of years ago was unknown to us and far beyond our grasp. To us, we were looking directly at the stars themselves. That there may be stars not visible to us was unimaginable. Surely, what we were viewing must be the entire universe. Yes, there was so much we did not know. As a child, everything seemed so big.

This exploration of a bigger world began when my brother received a telescope as a Christmas gift. He would spend hours reading about stars and planets, and then take the telescope outside at night to search the sky. He dreamed of being an astronomer. Me? I confess, I never had career thoughts, not then, not later. However, my brother succeeded in introducing the awe of the universe to me. I well recall viewing the moon as I had never seen it before, and enjoying the rings of Saturn that I had believed to be too far distant to see. Standing together in our backyard, at age eleven, I had my first realization of how insignificant we are in the greater view.

That dream of his never left; from my earliest memories until his untimely death just after his sixteenth birthday, he remained committed to experiencing a career in science and astronomy. Did that inspire me to contemplate my future? Did watching him give me pause to realize that he was looking to his future,// and that I should also be aware of such for me? Did it cross my young mind that someday I would be an adult? No, no, and no. I was a child, experiencing each day as it came, living in the  moment.

That view of my world was certainly acceptable, considering I was no more than eleven years old. But that was then; I’ve been an adult a long time, yet still find that my world remains always in the moment. What success I have enjoyed has been the result of serendipity, luck, and a touch of stupidity along the way. Do I regret it? Not in the least. My career was a journey of adventure, stumbling into new ideas, new opportunities, and different routes to travel. While I admire the persons who define their visions early in life and pursue them through to the culmination of their plans, that was not for me. My career began in the military, morphed into computer programming, then into training, then into consulting, followed by time in management, and later into website design and development. Is there a right way for planning careers? Thankfully, not. Planning is overrated. Life is to be discovered.