From stargazing to tinkering in no time flat!

I have been inundated with work recently.  I felt it was more than I could handle.  That feeling is horrible for someone who requires mastery of all within his domain.  If you didn’t get the hint, that would be me.  I then asked myself a very simple question.  Why did I want to become an engineer?  How did I go from a desire to explore the universe [1] to being a glorified tinkerer? The earliest memories I recall as a child was the desire to understand and control my surroundings.  Simply put, I wanted self-determination.  Of course, it wasn’t a conscious desire.  Merely an innate characteristic of every living thing.  As I grew that innate desire coupled with my practical nature directed me to question my desire to be in the star-gazing vocation.  Gazing at the stars and answering the fundamental questions of the physical universe is practical only in the astronomical sense.  The work I do would not bear fruit until well after I’m dead.  Translation:  Big questions take a very long time to answer.  I reconsidered the limitations of my rather short life-span compared to the age of the universe.  Maybe I could reach for something more manageable in my life time?  Something utilitarian?  Engineering!

And that, boys and girls,  is how a person reduces big dreams into something bite-sized.  Don’t take that statement as disappointment in how my life has turned out.  My happiness is not transcendent nor cosmic.  It is plain old contentment and that’s about as much as I can handle.

[1]  Being a pilot was “fallback” career if star-gazing wasn’t an option for me.  Yeah, it’s common and plebian, but I was 9 years old.