Goals and stupid dreams

I started to play the piano as a small kid. When my older sister were playing together with my mother, I asked if I couldn't play too. "You have to wait until you're five years old", my mother said. Then at the age of five my mother gave me my first pianolessons. At seven I started to take pianolessons for a professional piano teacher. At seven I also performed for an audience for the first time. Just like many Swedish pupils I participated in small concerts for parents and others.
My mother invited my piano teacher to our home. I remember that she was playing like a God. She played Chopin a piece my dad loved and had on a record. About years later my piano teacher asked me if there was any piece I wanted to play (she had actually never done that before) and I asked my dad who suggested that same lovely piece by Chopin.

My piano teacher was very demanding. She was always commenting and correcting and seldom gave any credit, but when I came back after having practised that particular piece she gave me an "eloge" for my work. I remember I performed at some competition at school with that particular piece of Chopin. (The performance wasn't perfect, since I had not played and practised long enough, but it was fun.) After that I didn't take any more lessons for that teacher. I had reached my goal.

When I started to work at a Big Company many many years ago, I had a manager who was a bit of a mentor. He was running a small team and he was very successful when it comes to revenues. The team consisted of specialists in different areas like software, electronics, mechanics and there was a production unit as well. My role was to assist him with investigations and help out with all kinds of things, like customer demonstrations. The challenge was whenever a competitor presented a new feature, to figure out how they were doing things in order to do something similar, to kill their arguments or to come up with something better. I learned a lot. At excibitions I always mingled around the competitors booth to get as much information as possible. My manager did too. It was fun.

I felt my manager treated me a bit like a predecessor. I remember at a conference when he was speaking, he told me he thought I was also going to speak at conferences in the future. I was determined I would try to do that. Sometime in the future.

Many years later, working in another area, I discovered that it was not competence and experience that was important if you ever should get the opportunity to speak at a conference. It was only a matter of having the right title and some presentation skills. A newly arrived manager without any knowledge in the same area where I had been working for many years, was going to make one of those large conference presentations. I tried really hard to get the opportunty to listen or at least to help out with the message and the presentation, but it seems everyone but me I could do that.
A stupid dream, wasn't it?

Time to get some new goals and dreams.