Life, uh, Finds a Way
How I Lost, Found, and Fulfilled My Childhood Dream
This is a tale about dinosaurs and a girl who loved them more than anything and was (mistakenly) certain that they would always be the focus of her life. But more than dinosaurs, this is a tale about how we lose faith in our childhood dreams, accept a more realistic path, and then quietly let go of that hope—and why it doesn’t have to end that way.
Did you want to be an astronaut? How about a ballerina? Maybe run away and join the circus?
I wanted to be a paleontologist when I grew up. But that didn’t happen. And I accepted that my childhood dream would never come to life.
I’m dreaming of dinosaurs.
But here’s the funny thing—life truly can find a way to bring your childhood dreams back from dust, if you’re willing to dig a little deeper for them. This is the tale of my childhood dream working with dinosaurs: where it all started, how it died off, how my youthful wonder got reanimated, and ultimately how I am living out my dream today.
Sidenote: If you want to get to the moral of this tale, skip over my sentimental ramblings and jump right to the bottom section. But I promise you’ll be missing out on some classic Cali-freaks-out-over-dinosaurs pictures.
Childhood: Jurassic Park, Museum School, and My True Calling
I love dinosaurs (like really, really love dinosaurs) and my fanatical love started young, real young.
In 1993 when Jurassic Park was released, I was a mere 4 years old. My parents, at my crying behest, took me to see the brilliant movie-love-child of Michael Crichton and Steven Spielberg in theaters. Seeing it on the big screen absolutely terrified me—and was gasoline on the flame that was my fervent obsession with dinosaurs.
Ya gotta dress the part, right?
I knew then with unwavering confidence that I would be a paleontologist when I grew up.
A true devotee to this dream, I attended this fun little program called Museum School, taking as many dinosaur-focused classes as I could.I watched the 1992 PBS documentary titled simply The Dinosaurs! so many times I could recite details of the Great Dinosaur Rush of the 1870s and the epic rivalry of Marsh versus Cope before my age reached double digits.
This was more than just a dream. This was my passion. This was my calling. This was the defining element of my childhood.
But you can’t stay a kid forever.
Adolescence: My Pursuit of Paleontology Goes Extinct
I could never blame Michael Crichton for dampening my dinosaur-career dreams, so instead I blame my mother (Sorry, Mom).
I was still a child in many ways when Lost World came out in 1997, but my free time was spent writing more than it was playing with dinosaur toys, a shift that would solidify in my pre-teens on into adulthood.
When my mom and I saw Lost World, I came out of the theater re-energized to become a paleontologist. This is when my mother, mildly surprised that I was still half-clinging to that dream, pointed out Dr. Sarah Harding’s (the great Julianne Moore) lament about her field of work:
Source: www.jaredmobarak.com
“I’m sick of scratching around in rock and bone and making guesses, deductions about the nurturing habits of animals that have been dead for sixty-five million years.”
Is that really how I wanted to spend my adult life?
I suddenly took this into serious consideration: the true type of work, the kind of education it would take to get me there, the often hapless hope out in the field. I wasn’t good at science or math or patience. I was good at writing indoors with clear deadlines.
Loving something doesn’t necessarily mean you’re good at it, or good at the things that are required to pursue a career in it.
With this harsh reality, my adolescence was defined by my newfound talent for writing and my dinosaur toys were put on the shelf, quietly collecting dust behind me as I sat at a computer typing my little heart out.
Twenty-Something: From Nostalgia to Resurgence of Love
I emerged from college with a journalism degree and was well on my way to truly become a writer when my childhood passion started peeking out again. Perhaps it was that quarter-life crisis that suddenly demanded the comforts of youth? Whatever it was, dino-DNA was coursing through my veins again.
I spouted off links between paleontology and feminism. I decorated every room in my house with dinosaur models. I got a large, intricate tattoo of a Utahraptor on my back shoulder. I cried the first time I saw Sue the T. Rex at the Field Museum in Chicago.
It all hit that nerve of nostalgia, and in those moments I was back in my own land before time where innocence and hope and love was all I needed to achieve all my dreams.
That’s when the door to my dreams opened back up in the most unlikely of ways...or at least by the most unlikely of characters.
Source: Sebastian Dooris
Thank god for Godzilla.
Today: Finding a Way to Fit into Their Ecosystem
Godzilla, King of the Monsters, was the catalytic character that brought me closer than I had ever been before to working with Tyrannosaurus Rex, King of the Tyrant Lizards.
It was a fateful day that I went to see Godzilla with a group of friends at Alamo Drafthouse on South Lamar in Austin.This was a special showing: after the feature, there would be a presentation and a Q&A with REAL PALEONTOLOGISTS from the University of Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Collections.
After my heroes gave a (semi) serious talk about Godzilla in relation to dinosaurs, I jetted down to the front of the theater to see tables of fossils they brought for display. Moving my way down the line I casually joked, “I always wanted to be a paleontologist, but somehow I ended up in Marketing instead haha.”
“We’re always looking for volunteers if you’re interested.”
If I cried seeing Sue the T. Rex, imagine how I reacted to that statement.
Immediately the next day I emailed the nice lady who gave me a volunteer pamphlet and waited to get my honorary paleontologist assignment. Instead, I learned that getting involved is not as easy as raising your hand with boundless passion. Volunteer openings were available between the hours of 9am and 5pm on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays with no weekend openings—an impossible commitment with my 9-to-5 job.
But my childhood dream had been ignited once again and no volunteer guidelines could extinguish my hope. I emailed back offering the very thing that put that dream on the back-burner in adolescence: my writing and strategic content skills.
And they happily agreed.
Housed in a massive warehouse, entering for my first meeting with the Texas Vertebrate Paleontology Lab instantly reminded me of the end scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark when the army puts the Ark of the Covenant into an endless warehouse of crates.
Filing cabinets opened up to expose drawer after drawer of small rattling bones with yellowing labels in type-writer text and delicate handwriting; a sterile white lab room smelling of plaster and resin with partially finished molds in every corner; and an air conditioned basement that contained a room beyond my imagination. Down the narrow steps and through a heavy door, I entered with my tour guide Matthew Brown, Director of Museum Operations for the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab, down into a huge underground storage facility with row after row of real gigantic fossils: a crocodile skull exceeding the length of my body, a bulbous turtle shell with puncture wounds from the teeth of that same crocodile species, the slender bones that created the 30+ foot wingspan of Quetzalcoatlus, and vertebrae of the very Alamosaurus residing at the Perot Museum in Dallas.
My heart was exploding.
Despite all my child-like wonder, I came floating back to reality in the warehouse office. In there I finally figured out where I could fit in the paleontology universe I had left behind—lending my digital strategy experience and content expertise to help the department restructure their outdated website and copy-edit all their extensive content.
Sidenote: Please keep in mind this is still a major work in progress.
I even got to be one of the volunteers on the other side of the table during a special screening of Land Before Time. After the movie I shared my dinosaur enthusiasm with little kids, showing them fossils as they excitedly marched down the line at the front of the theater.
That’s me in the white shirt between a real paleontologist and some real freakin’ fossils!
If that didn’t satisfy my childhood dreams, then I don’t know what else could.
Tomorrow: Continue to be a Clever Girl
So to a certain degree, I am actually doing it—I’m fulfilling my childhood dream. Sure, it’s not going out to the dusty field, but I’m still getting that feeling of pure happiness that only occurs when you’re young and haven’t been jaded by the world.
The moral of this annoyingly long tale is that childhood dreams don’t have to be forever defunct.
Instead of listing off reasons why you could never be an astronaut or ballerina or circus runaway, start listing off the things you have to offer. Get clever.
Can you draw? Can you cook? Do you have a set of hands and free hours during the day? Get creative with what you can give or services you can volunteer. Chances are you have some sort of random skills that some organization could use—an organization that focuses on that childhood dream of yours.
But you’ll never know if you don’t ask. And you can never ask if you don’t look. And you’ll never look if you don’t give that dream a second chance.
When you were a kid you didn’t decide that one day you’d be an astronaut or ballerina or circus runaway because someone told you, “Hey 4-year-old, I think you’d be really great at this thing that takes years of grueling dedication and talents that there’s no way of telling you have yet. But you should really consider it.”
We come up with these dreams because they interest us. And if there’s any inkling of interest left, why not see how close you can get.
Life finds a way if you give it a shot.
I’m finally working (volunteering) behind the scenes living out my childhood dreams.
