I've always wondered what it would have been like growing up with a family business. As it was the very idea seems somewhat foreign to me. On one side my grandparents were dairy farmers and on the other it was...well I'm not exactly sure what they did, but it wasn't exactly a line of work that could be followed. Both my parents were in the military for a short time and did various jobs before settling into government-related work. So growing up I thought that a job was just something you went to do in order to earn money, which it in fact is, but the work my parents did wasn't anything that they wanted to pass down to me. Some people grow up in a family of cops or business owners. So in those situations it may seem somewhat logical that the career choice was a bit more predetermined. They say you can be anything you want when you're growing up. While that may be true for some people in some situations, for a lot of people there are limitations to what our career choices may be. Having family that already owns a chain of McDonald's would certainly help someone if they too wanted to get into the restaurant business.
I've often wondered how family businesses even get started. My entire adult career has just been a series of jobs in offices. For the most part I'm very interchangeable with the other drones who sit in a cubicle all day. It's not exactly a bad thing because apparently the modern world needs people like me, who are willing to contribute to the process, whatever that may be. Then there are others who have stepped off the path and ventured out on their own. There are some very enterprising people out there. Someone could look at a location and realize that there is a need for a vending machine. At first it may be a means to make a little additional money. If the location is good and they're contentious about stocking it, a vending machine could make you a fair amount of money. Using the proceeds from that one machine a person could potentially buy more machines and expand to a point where it becomes their primary source of income. To me it's that first step of deciding to buy a vending machine that would never occur to me. Is that because of my upbringing when it comes to jobs? Maybe partially it prevented someone like me from ever straying from the traditional sense of work.
Growing up I had no idea what I wanted to do for a living. Truth is I'm still not entirely sure. I know that I want and need money so I just do what seems rational to get it. It was very late in high school that I even decided where I wanted to go to college or for what major. The whole thing was almost on a whim. I knew I liked computers. I knew that I had at least some talent when it came to them and they were still considered to be fairly new in terms of everyday use. Before they were being run by guys in California who knew how to speak the incomprehensible language of the computer and had math skills that made normal people run in fear. At least that was the perception we had of computers in those days. A recruiter came to our school to talk about a technical college that would get me a Bachelor's degree in three years. A real degree too, not some fake degree you'd get from the University of Grenada. Up until that point I had carried around this idea that maybe I'd become a robotics designer, not knowing anything about the field except that it sounded cool. Having done some research it was going to be less about designing The Terminator and more about building a robot that welded a bumper onto a truck. Not the most exciting work out there. Plus the math required was intimidating. While I was good at math at the time, it wasn't exactly the kind of thing I wanted to spend my life doing. So after the recruiter's presentation I met with him to talk further about his college. Thing went very quickly from there. I suddenly had a direction and I just went with it.
While I was in school I was more or less on autopilot. I started this education path that would lead to a career field, so I was going to do what was necessary to finish it. Part of that was because I had never failed when it came to academics so failure to graduate didn't seem like an option, as cliche as that may sound. The other part came from the fact that I couldn't think of anything else to do should I not like where I was going. High school is almost like a salad bar when it comes to subject matter. They offer you a bunch of different information, but you ultimately take what you want and go with it if you're interested. I won't say high school was uninteresting, but nothing had really sparked for me. At least not until I started using computers. Really my career has been based on the fact that as a teenager I lacked the imagination to think of anything else.
There are some people who know what they want to do for a long time before they actually achieve it. A guy I went to high school with wanted to be a pilot for as long as I had known him. After we graduated he went to the academy to become a pilot. As far as I know that's what he's doing now. Sometimes I wish I had that kind of laser-like focus when it came to a career. I often wonder what kind of jobs other people do if they're not in the computer industry. In my mind there are like a dozen possible career choices, which is obviously limiting the true scope of the job world.
So what is it about certain people who decide they're not going to sit in a cube or the thought of doing so wouldn't even occur to them that makes them do the things they do? Is it easier for those people who have a family business to go into? I'm sure in many cases there are those who don't want anything to do with their father's scrap metal business or become a lawyer like their mother. Still having a predefined choice might be nice. Is your current career something your children could follow you into when they get old enough? Would you want them to? I wonder if the jobs we do today will be antiquated by the time our children are entering the workforce. What happens to the family business when there is no longer a need for that business?
