Buffalo Composer Musings: What Will I Be?

We all go through stages in life. The question "What do you want to be when you grow up?" seems to change with the seasons and the decades. Not everyone remembers their childhood dreams, but I can remember mine clearly through the years:

At four I wanted to be a preacher
At six I wanted to be a paleantologist
At eight I wanted to be an international spy

At eleven I wanted to be an astronaut

At twelve I wanted to be a famous rock drummer
At fifteen I wanted to be a timpanist with the Boston Pops
At seventeen I wanted to be a writer
At nineteen I wanted to be a traveling percussion soloist
At twenty-one I wanted to be alive
At twenty-two I wanted to be a filmmaker
At twenty-four I wanted to be a composer
At twenty-eight I wanted to be married
At twenty-nine I wanted to make a difference
At thirty-one I wanted to make a baby

And at thirty-five I wonder "What will I be when I grow up?"

Maybe it's strange to ask myself this question now. After all, I've hit maybe half of my childhood dreams. I might have to scratch off international spy, but maybe I could unearth my first dinosaur at eighty? 

Maybe it doesn't matter what we become when we grow up. Maybe it's the process, it's life. And when I'm 100, I'll still wonder "What will I be?"

 

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