Childhood Dreams

I had quite the busy week, but it fit right in with the topic of the Entrepreneurial Journal Entry.  One thing I’ve never done is travel much.  I’ve been a lot of places, but I don’t go often because I don’t have the time or the money.  This week I went to surprise my mom (dad knew I was coming), they live in Dallas, TX.  This past year both my mom’s mom and my dad’s dad passed away.  It’s been difficult on them, but soul searching for me.  I’ve learned that I need to spend more time with them and get to know them in ways I haven’t before.  I’m 35 and my mom is in her late 50’s and my dad his early 60’s.

My favorite part of this week was doing the Bucket List.  Traveling to see my parents like that by myself (without my wife and kids) was a bucket list type item.  Over the next two years I plan to take a long weekend trip with each one of them so they have a special memory when it was just me, them and my parents.

The video of Randy Pausch was emotional for me.  I ended up watching other clips of his story.  What an incredible man.  I think he achieved so many of his childhood dreams because he was allowed to dream.  I loved his plea to parents to let their kids draw on walls and be creative.  Kids need that space to do that.  I don’t know that I’m quite ready to do that yet, but I’m getting there.  Dreaming is really important because without it I think we become too focused on the average and don’t look at the possibilities of what is out there.

I don’t remember much of my childhood dreams.  The ones I do were very superficial.  The one that I remember the most was when I was a little older and that was that I wanted to coach sports.  A goal of mine is to work my way into a great position at work so that when my boys are old enough to be in high school sports I’ll have the freedom to take time off work and coach their teams.  I’m well on my way to do that and it’s so much more meaningful than I thought it would be because it’s involving my children and not just my love of sports.