Dream Job Revisited

Describe your ideal job.

As a young person starting to work in earnest, a great starting point.   It is the key question in all the career books.  Every career counselor will ask you as well.    Yet, most of all, it is something to ask of self.

What is my ideal job?  Imagine it.  Describe it.  Touch and taste it.

Only for the young starting out a life of work and defining their career.  Not for the aged and experienced.  We forgot the question, let alone how to answer it.

Yesterday I remembered the question.  I watched as my daughter answered this question and set her path toward realizing her ideal job.   Lauren was just accepted into the Disney College Program.  This next Fall she will be moving to the land of Mickey to learn the highly successful ways of the mouse.   Her ideal job is to be an artist working for Disney.   This opportunity is a path toward her goal.

As I watched Lauren celebrate and shake with sheer happiness, I remembered an ideal job I thought of many, many years ago when I was her age.  It also involved Disney.   I wanted to be a senior leader running the operations at Disneyland.  A focus on perfect execution and the best experience for each guest.

Too many reasons that seem trivial now kept me from exploring opportunities at Disney.  Instead I stayed close to home and entered corporate life with a different company.  As I sit here today, 25 years later, I find that my focus remained on operational excellence and the people surrounding me.  No regrets.

Yet, as I write, I imagine and create.  My fingers move and I am taken back. I am there in my alternative career.  I walk the park and notice the details and the interplay of activity.  I resolve issues, hopefully before  they materialize.  I talk to guests and do what I can to assure all have a wonderful experience. I am happy.

I come back to now.  My children know they have my full support to follow their dreams, express their unique talents and indeed, describe their ideal job as the place they journey each day.

Yet, I still wonder.  What is the deadline for next year’s Disney College Program?