Today’s Bloganuary prompt is:

What was your dream job as a child?

I didn’t think much about adulthood as a kid. I spent a lot of time reading, absorbing, and learning, but I didn’t wonder how any of that would translate into a method of making money in the future. I was content with just being in the fantastical realm of words.

I do vaguely remember one time being asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, and I eagerly replied, “a parachutist”! I only just now looked that word up and realized it is a real word. I always thought I made the word up. Ha!

Anyway, I didn’t continue to go through life dreaming about skydiving. Don’t get me wrong. It’s on my bucket list. I think I’d probably have heart failure if I ever actually did it, but I may give it a go one day in spite of that possibility.

Once I got older, though, late teens, I suppose, that’s when I began to think about my “dream job”. I’d seen some shows on television that showed people in long white lab coats, tweaking dials and gizmos on giant room-sized computers. That’s what I wanted to be. I wanted to be someone who worked with computers. And I definitely wanted to wear those white lab coats!

As it turned out, I have worked with computers my entire adult life. My career jaunts took some alternate routes at times that prevented me from becoming the formally-trained computer programmer that I really wanted to be, but I always found ways to be as close to the thing I wanted as I possibly could. 

I’m a writer, sure, but for many years that was the talent that was the hidden layer behind the work I did as an SEO / online marketing expert, web designer / developer, and online business teacher and consultant. Some of those professions didn’t strictly require technical computer knowledge, but I believed I was better at those things because I could use computers to elevate the results. 

Now, as a managing editor for the company that created the software that powers 43% of all the world’s websites, I am in a sweet spot. I get to write and edit and publish words that help people use a software platform to create their own websites. My love for writing, teaching, and computers all combined into one career junction, which is where I’m at right now. 

I’ve parachuted right down into my dream job, even if it did take a few decades. Pretty cool.

I don’t wear the white lab coats, though. Dang, maybe I should. I work from home, after all. Nothing’s stopping me from wearing them, right?

This post is part of the WordPress Bloganuary Challenge for 2023, where everyone participating is provided a writing prompt each day. Today’s prompt was to write about my childhood dream job.