Friday, November 24, 2006

I didn’t want to be a baker today

I have this longstanding dream that someday I’ll open my own bakery. I have a business name and a very basic marketing strategy and a sort of a high-level plan. Some days I think about it a lot, strategizing about how to reach my goal in 5 or 10 years. Some days I worry that I keep talking about it but never do it and that maybe I should, ‘ahem’, or get off the pot. I really like daydreaming about my bakery and imagining working there. I like planning it out and working out some of the details. I even get really upset whenever anyone even suggests that it might be a bad idea. I think mostly though, that the truth is, I really like knowing that I have a back-up plan. I like nurturing the idea that at any given moment if I decide I don’t like science or I’m not enjoying my job, I could leave. Walk away and go somewhere else. I’m doing this job because I want to. I don’t need it.

“Don’t mess with me science ‘cause I have another love. Break my heart and
I’ll just move on to my bakery."


I think that the truth is that I have a precarious relationship with my scientific career and it’s comforting for me to know that I go to my job every day because I choose to. And if the day ever comes that it’s too hard to go to that job – I don’t have to.

Today, I didn’t imagine my bakery at all. I didn’t think about how I’d do things the same or differently than ‘this’ if I had my bakery. Today, I didn’t want to be a baker. Today I wanted a career in the medical/engineering field. That’s how I know that today was a really good day at work.

Talk to you soon,

B.

No comments: