My Life in Weeks

So I came across an interesting Web site that breaks down people's lives in weeks. Looking at the charts on there was sort of humbling, seeing how short our lives our and how long periods of time are really just a set of weeks that we string together.

Having looked at those charts, I figured I'd do my own. First, I plotted out some major points in my life--beginning dates were circled. That kind of points out important times, but to get a real feel for how long certain things have been as relative to my whole life I opted to color the squares.

When I do, some things become really evident. I've been at my current workplace a long time--longer than just about any other string. I have been there longer than I went to grade school through high school (when I add in college, however, I have still spent more of my life in school than at my current employer).

If I look at the color blocks at time in particular states, the blue is formidable, but it still has a long ways to go before catching up to what the California bar would be--pretty much all the boxes before the yellow section. But if I put the yellow, green, and blue together--time out of California--it looks like more time than I've spent in Cali. That's an illusion, caused by how much I've broken California time up. Still, I'm getting close; give it three more years, and I'll have been out of my birth state longer than I was in it.

School life it appears still takes up more of my life than work-only life, but if one considers that I was working during the time I went to college, then the story is quite different.

Anyway, below are the charts.

Jobs I've Dreamed of versus Jobs I've Had

I'd say I've done fairly well in terms of actually working in fields in which I have an interest, as can probably be surmised by the handy timeline below.
The timeline shows my main dream job at top, my main real jobs at bottom. This isn't exhaustive, though, because I have had part-time second jobs, and there have been other jobs I've dreamed of having. For example, at various times, I've thought how need it would be to be a screenwriter, an amusement park ride designer, a fruit farmer, a comedian, a radio deejay, a publisher, and a designer or compositor. In real life, I've done a little deejaying (for pay--it was not something, in the end, that I enjoyed), and I've done some design and composition and screenwriting just for fun.

But I'm blessed that the job I really desired from about my teen years on became the one that I have. I often ponder what I would do instead were I to have to choose another career, and the fact is I don't know.