Apr. 15: Dream come true

I found a new (to me) web site today and was inspired to start a new blog habit. I can’t promise it’ll be done on a regular basis, but maybe instead of yanking out those boring memes when I have nothing else to post, I can try blogging about an Awesome Thing.

The site I happened upon is 1000 Awesome Things. Its description of itself is quite simple:

1000 Awesome Things is just a time-ticking countdown of 1000 awesome things. Launched June, 2008 and updated every weekday. Coming out as 400-page hardcover The Book of Awesome in April, 2010.

Their countdown of 1000 awesome things can be found here. Today’s awesome thing is #526 When Dreams Come True. The author writes about the publication of his book, which I would say definitely fits the “awesome” category, huh?

What is your dream come true?

I didn’t have to think very long about this one; I’ve had lots of my dreams come true. Have I really been aiming too low all this time? Possibly. I don’t like being disappointed, so maybe I don’t let myself dream big. Have I lived a charmed life? I don’t think so… My parents divorced when I was a kid, my dad died too young, my grandmother hates me, I’ve been living the last 20 years with an autoimmune disorder that causes constant pain, I have migraines, there’s that pesky CANCER thing… and yet, I don’t look back on the past 40 years as the suckiest sucking years that ever sucked. And I’m far from being an optimist or always-looking-on-the-bright-side kind o’ gal. Hm.

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about a dream come true is being hired as a full time software trainer at IBM-Catapult in 1996. I had hoped for years of someday being a corporate trainer, and there it was. Every job I’d had up to that point had helped me get this one, yes… but I felt like I was finally at my CAREER. It was what I’d worked for throughout college, the job I’d been promised my education would help me find (my degree is in business education). And suddenly, it was mine. Not too sensational, this dream come true, but it was exactly what I wanted at that time.

To add to the awesomeness, there were things about being a trainer that were better than I had dreamed, besides the free Tazo tea and office supplies:

• I had no inbox; every day I taught a class and then I was done. I loved that.
• Those wretched office politics? Almost non-existent. I rarely saw my coworkers, and most of us understood there was little personal gain in backstabbing, so it was, for the most part, a happy place to work.
• If I hated a student, there was little chance I’d ever have to see him or her again.
• We instructors were looked upon as experts by our students. That’s a good little ego boost right there.
• My skills could not become stagnant; I was encouraged (and helped) to keep up with the latest technology.
• My fellow instructors were a kick—one of the best groups of people with which I’ve ever worked. I still keep in touch with many of them because they were and are <singsong voice> SUPER COOL.
• More than anything—and it always makes me a little bit teary to describe this part—I could leave work almost every day and say I DID SOMETHING GOOD TODAY. Occasionally a student would come to me after class and say, “Thank you. What I learned today is going to help me do my job so much better.” More often, they’d write a nice comment on their evaluation. However they let me know, I could often feel like I’d made a difference, and that’s the appeal that teaching has always held for me.

Don’t get me wrong, there were pretty rotten things about being a trainer, too. But they fit into the “not awesome” category, and we’re talking “awesome” today.