★ When I Grow Up…

We all had dreams and aspirations as kids. We all wanted to do something with our lives and I have a feeling most of us didn’t fulfill those dreams. I had a close friend who told me she wanted to be an aerospace engineer and, at the time, she was early in high school and today, she’s doing it and living that dream. it took a lot of hard work but she accomplished that dream. There’s nothing wrong with not achieving those dreams. The only constant in our lives and in the universe is change and evolving with this change is the only way to stay afloat. While it’s on my mind, I wanted to post what I wanted to be and put some life goals in place. Maybe I can actually do these one day. Who knows?

My job choice changed over the years. At a very young age my dream was to be a fireman. Fighting fires and saving lives but that ended around the age of 12 when I suddenly decided that I wanted to be an astronaut. I was dead set on going to space camp and it took about 2 years to realize that my math and science skills just weren’t there so blasting off into space wasn’t going to happen without a ton of hard work. Of course, you’re a kid and hard work is synonymous with getting up early on Saturday. It’s the last thing you want to do.

My plan until I was around 14 was that I was going to graduate high school and go into the air force and then go to college on the air force payroll and hopefully transition into NASA by the time I was 26. In retrospect, my odds weren’t very good of making it all of the way considering my academic performance and since 9/11/2001, I would be fighting a war so avoiding the armed forces was probably a good idea.

Throughout all of my aspirations. Fireman, Astronaut, Scientist and even professional surfer there has been one thing in my mind since I was young and it’s the one thing that keeps calling me back no matter how far away from it I get but I’ll go into that in a second.

When I was 12, we bought our first computer. A 66MHz Pentium I PC from Hewlett Packard. It booted up to Windows 3.1 and had a 512 megabyte hard drive. I signed on by the minute to  AOL 2.0 and learned the world of the web. It didn’t take long for me to take the computer apart and buy books to help put it back together. At the age of 13, I met a man named George Waters and he gave me a couple of computers. One of those was a system running Red Hat Linux and the other was a Macintosh LC III. Both of them had some random cards and some old software. He also gave me some books and I started working on computers. In 2001, I saved up and purchased an Apple iBook. I was a freshman in high school. I ended up working for George for 3 years (19-21 yrs of age). The rest is history.

My fathers on both sides, both my biological and my dad since the age of two have a history in law enforcement. My biological father heads up investigative teams in Florida for the Highway Patrol. He’s been there since just after I was born so that’s 20 years on the force. Not bad. The man I call Dad who my Mom married when I was two was a police officer and paramedic. He began teaching me martial arts when I was 2 and he continues teaching others and has a dojo in Florida. I’ve been training with him for 20 years and only recently took a break when I moved to San Francisco for work.

Dad’s training has always had a focus on self-defense. I’ve trained in boxing, wrestling, what you might call mixed martial arts and a slew of traditional Japanese martial arts. The past 7 years, we have focused on Aikido. The experience has been very rewarding. Many times I’ve had the opportunity of working doorman with Dad at bars and he has had the chance to teach defensive tactics to local and national law enforcement. His prior police experience paired with his martial arts experience has helped my training but made him an excellent candidate for teaching law enforcement. Here’s a video I just made for him and uploaded for the launch of his new website.

All of this lead up and I’m sure you will see where this is going. Yes I’ve wanted to be a cop since I was very young. Seeing both of my Dads put on a uniform at some point, or spending weekends training with SWAT teams and doing defensive tactics just after being sprayed with pepper spray and even shock treatment by the way of tasers. This combined experience paired with my emotional need to help people keeps drawing me into the realm of law enforcement but I have a few years before I’m tool old to join so there are a few other things that I will be listing below that are some childhood dreams.

Since moving to San Francisco I’ve stopped break-ins, robberies, assault and a few minor misdemeanors just by the way of phoning the police and by stopping things myself. I even setup a webcam that caught people doing illegal things outside the window of my old apartment. Finally, I’ve been helping my partner take that webcam to a city wide scope and help fight crime on a national level using citizen surveillance. For now, I’m only pursuing this as a volunteer position which many call a weekend warrior. I ride along and help the police force but they’re legally less liable to take care of me if I’m hurt and of course I don’t have any weapons. It’s not the glory that you’d expect and certainly doesn’t relieve you of paperwork but it’s still something to get involved. Will I put on the badge full time one day? Of course I will. The one thing I can’t escape from is that need to be a police officer and fight crime and help good people. There’s no avoiding it.

What other things did I want to do when I grew up? I’ve accomplished a few of these already.

• Write a book and call myself a published author
• Run a blog for 10 years and post one thing a week
• Own two homes on opposite ends of the earth
• Go into outer space
• Fly a jet or airplane
• Skydive
• Donate an organ to someone I love
• Invent something amazing
• Change someone’s life
• Get in a newspaper
• Be on television
• Save a child from a nearly fatal accident
• Be a DJ
• Be a producer
• Compose an electronic album and sell one copy
• Work for Apple Computer
• Work for Microsoft
• Learn another language
• Get a 4 year college degree in Journalism
• Live in 10 different cities
• Live in 5 different countries
• Surf the most beautiful waves in 5 different countries
• Swim in the red sea
• Go backpacking in Europe
• Drink green tea while looking out of rice paddies in Japan
• Climb a mountain
• Adopt a child of a different color
• Learn sign language
• Write a universal love letter that everyone can relate to
• Direct a film
• Learn to sing
• Learn to play piano
• Retire at the age of 30
• Own a Dodge Viper (but never drive it)
• Join the air force
• Pain a photo worthy of being hung on my mother’s wall

I’ve done the things italicized. I need to get to work on these right away. Only 8 years before I have to retire! The law enforcement thing is really calling me. I have so much to do before I take on that role but I’m completely serious about doing it. One of these days I’ll get the training and apply and I will save lives as a police officer, I just don’t know when yet.