When you were a little boy her girl or maybe a pre-teen, people started asking you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Do you remember your response? We hope you will consider sharing your memory in the comments in our private FaceBook Group, Attracting Abundance…Launch Your Biggest Dreams which can be found at this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/findyournewdirection or follow us on our FaceBook Page and leave a post on at Into The Emerald Blue Page – click here.
I remember telling people that I wanted to be a fireman. It was the early seventies and they would just look at me and say “No, silly you are a girl you cant do that.” In the United States that was true. It was not until 1985 when the first woman became a firefighter that I am aware of. By that time I was well into a very nice career working on Wall Street for Oppenheimer and Company as their new accounts manager and their Commodity Law and Compliance Specialist. For an artist who went to college for interior design Wall Street like quite a segue way. I’ll save that story for another day.
When I was told I could not be a fireman I had intended to become an Architect so I took 4 years of mechanical drawing and architecture in high school. At that time I did not have good advanced math skills and I needed good grades to get into an ivy league architectural school I had my eye on. I realize now, that it may have been partially because I didn’t have good math teachers. However it was made clear to me in class that girls didn’t need to learn math and I was lead to feel that artistic girls asked dumb questions. The same thing happened in Science class by the way. It was only years later that I realized Einstein’s questions were not always well received either. Do you have some experiences like that as a man or a woman? Please feel free to share them in the comments.
Back to my point in telling you all of this. Many of us try on several career directions before we decide our direction. I went on to attend one of the best schools for Interior Design in NYC. During college I had worked as a store clerk and front desk clerk at a hotel, an assistant banquet manager at the same hotel planning weddings and parties, then as a receptionist, as an underwriting clerk for a reinsurance company, I even applied to be a stewardess and got my real estate license in Connecticut. That is at least 7 different job hats before I was 21 not counting my very first job at a bridal shop when I was 14. By 1979 I had also attended the State University of New York where I took Economics I & II, Business Management, Accounting, Oral Communication, Psychology Literature and creative writing to compliment my visual concepts classes. All of those classes helped me in business and my work experiences taught me to be unafraid to embrace an entrepreneurial spirit and life style later in life. But that is another story.
During all those years I never forgot my dream of being a Fireman and in 1985 got my EMT Certification in NYC while still working for Oppenheimer. The pace on Wall Street was intense. When my first child came along, and the commodity division I was working was sold for the second time, I chose to leave New York in 1985 and move back to my native state of Michigan and raise my kids so they could be near their grandparents who had moved back there in 1978.
In Michigan I actually worked as an Interior Designer for 3 years until I realized the 60 mile commute to Grand Rapids got in the way of seeing my daughter enough, other than at bed time, breakfast and weekends. In I had 1993 I started reading Wayne Dyer and Shakti Gawain’s books using creative visualization, and later the law of attraction, to attract abundance in my life and to invoke a plan to live my biggest dreams. In the meantime, I stayed home on our farm, raised my kids and eventually got my Real Estate License in Michigan for extra income. I did that for 10 years until my divorce, then I worked as an insurance salesman in the small town we lived in so that I could have a regular pay check. I consider that those jobs came along out of geographical necessity and not because I couldn’t make up my mind what I wanted to be when I grew up. What do you want to be? What do you dream about doing? There is still time! That is me on the bottom left!
When my daughter decided in 2001 that she might like to be an EMT firefighter I started thinking about my dream again. She interviewed at the vocational school just a few days before September 11, 2001. On November 30th, 2001, while Ground Zero was still burning, I visited my friends in New York. Watching the firefighters at work, longing to full fill my childhood dream made me ask myself if 43 was too old to become a firefighter. It was not. I became a Certified Firefighter in Michigan and served as a part paid firefighter for almost 4 years in White Cloud, Michigan. I got my Class A CDL at that time and I have to admit I love being in the 5% club. At that time only 5% of women had CDL’s, or were firefighters and had motorcycle endorsements. Around the same time I took a job driving a propane truck because it paid better than working in an office in rural Michigan. I did not become a web designer full time until the mid 2000’s when I went back to college again. Have you ever wanted to go back to college? What would you like to go for?
I applied to the Grand Rapids Fire Department in 2005 and made it to be one of the last 50 candidates out of 2500 people (400 were women) 2005. I am very proud of that. I did not end up on their department, however did pass all my interviews, even with the Chief! I missed passing my CPAT test by 1 minute and 30 seconds because my forearms were not quite strong enough to pull down 45 pounds from the ceiling 30 times. I got to 23 every time. UGH! That is why I am a firm believer in hiring a coach to help train you when launching your biggest dreams! It turned out to be blessing in disguise however, since I found out that, what I thought was a leg injury, was really sciatica, heavy weight training and a birth defect caused my last vertebrae to go forward 40% . Surgery was required to remedy my Spondylolisthesis. I now have S1, L4 and L5 fused. Many male firefighters go on to serve again however they have the larger body size to compensate for the 35 to 45 pound weight limit my fusion would allow.
The point is I got to fulfill my dream of being a fireman. I still have my badge, my helmet and my memories! You can apply yourself and you can train, with the right teachers, mentors, tutors, guide or coach you can launch your biggest dreams. All it takes is 17 seconds with Law of Attraction to set your dreams in motion. I started embracing my creative side after that and went back to college to become a Web Designer, started painting again and opened my own web consulting business called BrassWind Designs and my own hosting company, as a reseller of GoDaddy Services at www.sailawayhosting.com. On the 10th Anniversary of 911 I put on my firefighters uniform and my badge and walked with my former department at the memorial event and got to dedicate a beautiful bronze sculpture created by a friend of mine, Ron Head, to the Firefighter’s Memorial in Roscommon, Michigan. It is of an angel on the back of a firefighter and was sculpted during the initial hours when the towers came down. Bittersweet.
Jaye and I want to encourage you to think about what your biggest dreams are. If we can help guide and coach you with that, whether it is through helping you decide how to build your website and share your story or if it is because something is blocking your way financially, emotionally, or because of a relationship we are here to help sort out those blocks using the Law of Attraction and other technical skill sets.
What is at the end of your rainbow? This may look like someones house burning down but to me it symbolizes my dream of being a fireman! We would love to hear about your dreams so please make you own post in our private FaceBook Group, Attracting Abundance…Launch Your Biggest Dreams or just leave a comment or question below this post. If you are ready to schedule a breakthrough call then please email or private message Jaye and she will arrange a time to call you back. You can also choose a time on her Into The Emerald Blue Breakthrough Call Calendar – click here.
The other dream I have had since I was in my twenties, was to one day live on a sailboat. Today I am doing just that…. and that, as they say is a story for another day!
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