Death Defying Life Leaps

I am slowly being forced to take a deep look at where I am going in the future.  This scares me.  For years I always knew what the next step was. High school it was college. College it was a job. Start the job, start my graduate degree.  Halfway through the masters degree, well, I'm here on the edge trying to figure out what I am doing. 

Death defying life leap time.

I have some ideas of what I want to do. I want to stay in the space industry. I love what I do. But then I have to toss in the questions. Do I want to stay in Denver? Do I want to be a big system person or a detail person? Do I want to focus on one system or a vehicle? Do I want to even work on the vehicle?  These are just the tip of the iceberg. 

The most important one and the scariest one for me: will I always be an engineer? I worked for years to become an engineer. I am getting my masters in engineering.  Engineering is no walk in the park. I also chose to always take the routes that would challenge me.  Am I OK with giving up a part of who I am?  

At this point I know a few things: I need to work with people, I am an integration person, and I may not always do hard core engineering, but I will always be an engineer. That is a stain you can never rub off.

The leaps of faith I will be taking in the next few years will define my trajectory.  I used to say that I was going to figure everything out once I finished my masters but it is sounding like I may need to make choices faster than that.  Right now it just may be small leaps of faith. Leaps that I am going in the right direction.  If I had to answer now what I wanted to do when I grow up, I could tell you. It may change though. I haven't seen enough. I don't know enough.  This is where the faith comes into play. 

Have a little faith it will work out and my death defying life leaps will lead to many nights of dancing in the moonlight.



"Death Defying Life Leaps" and "Dancing in the moonlight" phrasing is from Tajar Tales by Jane Shaw Ward. Do you know what a Tajar is? Well, it is something like a tiger, something like a badger, and something like a jaguar. If you should seem him once you'd forget what he looked like. But if you should see him twice you'd forget to forget what he looked like, and that would be quite fatal.