I love hats!! Physical hats like ball caps, fedoras, bowlers, the old man golf caps, the big floppy sun hats, and even the occasional sombrero, if the event calls for it.
But I also love metaphorical hats!! You know, those that symbolize the jobs you do?
My favorite hat, and the one I wear the most is my learning cap. Do you remember in school when your teacher told the class, “Now it’s time to put on our thinking caps,”??? Or was that just my teacher?
I love to learn!!
I love to research and then write or talk about what I found out!! It may be something as profound as the fact that a baby’s saliva gives the mother the antibodies she needs to fight off infection or some well-known piece of information that I never knew like Donnie Wahlberg being in the New Kids on the Block!!
I have worn many hats in my lifetime.
Journalist, Teacher, Childcare Provider, Editor, Author, Mom, Homeschool Mom, Zsa Zsa (my name as a grandmother), and Wife are all names of hats that I have worn and mostly continue to wear!!
Creativity Matters to Me
I am a very creative individual with interests including writing, painting, drawing, cake decorating, and cooking. I know quite a bit about the English language and its proper use, child development and behavior modification, book-keeping and business management. I also happen to know quite a bit about the LP Gas industry due to my husband being a part of it for the last 19 years! Lately, that comes with the hat of being a “First Lady” as my husband is the president of the Oklahoma LP Gas Association. For me, that hat has taken quite a bit of adjusting since it was a little too frumpy and restrictive for me, but I am finally wearing it proudly!!
I NEED a new hat!!
I have been looking for a completely new hat to wear for a few years now. Something that would test my self-set limits and bring me out of my comfort zone! I don’t really love comfort zones because when you get comfortable, you get complacent and eventually complacency leads to contempt! (From an episode of Two and a Half Men, I think Ashton Kutchner’s character said it!)
My son is a software engineer and when he approached me with the idea of attending a software engineering bootcamp to learn some new skills, and possibly start a new career, I was not sure I wanted to go that way because I am such a creative person. But, my interest was peaked, so I looked at the free resources he sent me. I tried on that new hat and I did NOT want to take it off!!
This hat fits!!
I can now see that I can use many of the things that wearing my other hats has taught me to be a great software engineer. I can use my creativity to create innovative programs to help others. I have had an idea for a program to assist people with difficulty interpreting social cues rattling around in my brain for awhile, and I can now see myself being able to build such a program.
I can use the people skills that I learned from being a business owner, a mom and a childcare provider to communicate with my peers and to eventually help me put on the hat of being a successful product manager.
Dreams in the Making
My husband and I have dreamed for years of living by the ocean. He would love to wear a beach-bum hat but has promised that once he retires from his career in the LP Gas industry, he will find himself a hat that he absolutely loves wearing that doesn’t entitle him to just laying around on the beach with a drink in his hand all day!!
I am excited to keep on my thinking cap for the rest of my life and I will keep adding more hats to my collection. A new look, a new attitude and new experiences come with each one and I hope to be collecting and wearing new hats (both physical and metaphorical) until the day I die. And even then, they better put a hat on me for my funeral!!!