There are three professions that have always intrigued me. Whenever I meet someone who does these jobs or when I read about them it always causes me to pause and put myself into their position.
In no particular order, these jobs are:
Professional Writer/Novelist –And I don’t mean just any type of writer, I mean a science fiction writer. I love science fiction. I have been reading and watching science fiction since I was a boy. Now that I am older I seem to have less time to read and the very act of reading makes me tired but I still plod on. The thought of creating my own worlds, characters and stories just sounds incredibly fun. In reading my post or previous posts you can clearly see why I am not one of these, my writing sucks.
Game Programmer – This is one that I have been tantalizingly close too for my entire adult life. This is simply because I am a software developer already. After college in the early 80’s while all my friends went off to get mainframe (IBM 43xx) and mini (PDP’s, Wang) programming jobs I went off and worked writing software for the Apple IIe, TRS-80’s, CP/M and IBM PC’s working in BASIC, C, Pascal and machine code. Of course now it is ASP.NET and web based application development. Somehow I never crossed over into the game development arena although I love to play computer games and many years ago dabbled at writing my own simplistic games just for fun. I have worked with and hired contractors who had worked in the game world and they never painted a pleasant picture so maybe I was just scared off, who knows.
Cross Country Truck Driver – ok, now you can quit laughing. This is one I did not really think about until about 12 years ago. One of my buddies, who was single and made a ton of money consulting (Win 95, C++ developer) in the mid 90’s decide one day to quit his job, buy a truck and a orangutan and hit the road living his fantasy. Ok, the orangutan part was not real, it’s a old Clint Eastwood reference, sorry. Anyway, somehow he did manage to get a truck (after getting appropriate license of course) and some jobs and dropped off the face of the earth for many years. I never really saw him again but I heard that he eventually went back to programming. Anyway, I have a lovely family that I in no way want to leave but the idea of hitting the road alone with no baggage and set place to call home and see the countryside sounds intriguing. I am sure the reality of the job is not as glamorous as I dream plus I have a family so I never would pursue this.
Anyway, that’s it. Those are what to me I would consider dream jobs.