What Would You Do

So the Mrs. proposed a rather interesting question on a recent road trip: If you could do something else for your job, something very much different -- perhaps hinging on a regret of sorts from our youth (yes, we're that old these days!), what would it be? Now in the past, we've used this means of questioning to determine career direction. In fact, it was what first suggested to us a different career path for me (one I'm still working towards, mind you!). But in this context, current work happiness and future work happiness did not play a role. It was more simple and straightforward a proposition: What sounds cool and sounds like something you'd want to do?

My answer, to her somewhat surprise, was: work for the CIA. Of course, I'm too passive and possess the complete inability to fool anyone, so being an agent was not my intent. I supposed to her something at Langley in either the tech field or maybe even languages. Leading too my wishing I had spent more time learning languages as a youth.

And this is why the Mrs. and I work. For as much as we are different, we are alike in the cool, essential stuff. The same overarching abstract types of things govern the differences we espouse on a day-to-day basis.

The Mrs. too wished to be a translator. She figured to work in a hospital, being the person people of different cultures can turn to in a crisis. Having witnessed the compassion, comfort and strength the translators can show at her own hospital.

Of course, we went into our explanations for why we chose what we did (my reason, well, it'd be cool to say you work for the CIA. Wait! Can you say that?). I found in fascinating to think it through. To not think what you want to be doing now, but if circumstances were different, if you had taken a different step somewhere along the way, you wouldn't be entirely different than you are now, but you'd be different and doing something different. So what would that be?