The Interview

My son interviewed me on camera today for a school project. Once I got past how I looked and sounded (I am much more used to being BEHIND the camera), I was struck by the story I told. Based on his prompts, you see, I was essentially telling the story of my career--from what I grew up wanting to do to what I learned along the way, what I'd liked and disliked about certain jobs, and how I moved from one thing to another. He forced me to think on my feet about things, and to remember the good and the bad. He took me back to how I got to places, and with whose help. He asked me if I'd thanked the people who'd helped me. By the time we were done, he had a record of sorts of my career life, and I had an extra little bit of insight into a few things. Perhaps some of the good experiences had some down sides, and perhaps some of the "just getting by" jobs had a little more value than I'd thought.
 
Most days, we simply try to keep up with the present. Perhaps we hope for things in the future, and sometimes we long for things in the past, but rarely do we take the time to review what we wanted and how that has changed, what we got, and how that has changed us. Telling the story to my young (and brutally direct) interviewer forced me to think about some of these things, and will probably keep me thinking about them for a while.
 
I'm not exactly sure what he'll take away from this experience, aside from a fuller picture than he gets from my daily dinner table reports. Maybe he'll see that expectations can change. Maybe he'll realize that you can get knocked down and around and still get up. Maybe he'll discover that work is about some crazy, ever-changing balance of doing what you enjoy and making enough money to support your lifestyle. Any of these, I think, would make this a worthwhile assignment for him.

I know already that it was a worthwhile assignment for me.