This morning I have been remembering.

Maybe that is one of the privileges of being eighty-eight. You can sit with a cup of coffee and suddenly discover that something you haven’t thought about in fifty years has wandered back into the room.

This particular wandering started several days ago with a movie, Song Sung Blue, and a question:

What did you wanna be when you grew up?

I have been chasing that question ever since.

And memories keep coming.

When I went back to college, I was hardly the typical college student.

I had already worked professionally in broadcasting. I had been a writer and producer. I had worked in radio. I had produced audiovisual programs. I had worked for the Southern Baptist Radio and Television Commission. I had worked for Collins Radio.

I was doing things professionally that I would soon be studying academically.

And yet my previous college record was hardly impressive.

I had attempted 72 hours and completed only 29.

Academic probation.

There’s a phrase to put on your résumé.

But I went back.

I took those 29 hours to community college and completed an associate degree in about a year.

Then SMU.

At SMU something interesting began happening.

The university gave me academic credit for doing some of the things I already knew how to do.

I worked without pay with the public relations department and became the voice of SMU Today, a nationally syndicated radio program. I interviewed some of the university’s academic stars.

For my master’s project, SMU gave me half a year’s paid tuition to produce its student-recruitment film in 16mm.

I was learning.

But I was also doing.

I remember one professor announcing that everyone in the class would have to buy a recorder for the course projects.

I asked why I should buy one when I was already working at KBOX Radio using professional equipment all the time.

He looked at me.

Then he made me an offer.

Teach three class sessions for him, and the course credit was mine.

Apparently education and experience had discovered each other.

Maybe that has been one of the recurring themes of my life.

I went on to North Texas State University for doctoral work. My program combined education with my teaching field of speech communication and drama.

Again, learning and doing became intertwined.

The campus radio station had essentially been a laboratory that hardly anybody listened to. We developed it into a student-run station that eventually ranked among the top ten in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex.

Students began flying.

Doug Adams eventually became president of KDFW AM-FM-TV.

Sam Rosenwasser became a vice president with Scripps Broadcasting.

There were others.

Many others.

I was also asked to produce the university’s student recruitment film. This time I handed much of the actual production responsibility to a student and remained executive producer.

Maybe that’s another change that happens along the way.

At first you learn to do it.

Then you do it.

Eventually, if you’re fortunate, you learn to let somebody else do it.

My doctoral dissertation had the imposing title:

Attitudes of the Texas Film Industry Toward Film Studies Curriculum in Texas Institutions of Higher Education.

Most people probably wouldn’t take that to the beach.

Many doctoral students use their dissertations as launching pads for publication and further research.

I didn’t.

I did something else.

I put mine to work.

Instead of spending the following years primarily writing about how film and broadcasting should be taught, I began building programs where students could actually do it.

North Texas.

Stephen F. Austin.

Xavier.

Oklahoma.

Radio stations.

Television.

Film.

Cable.

Real audiences.

Real deadlines.

Real mistakes.

Real successes.

A student once was asked whether it was true that Dr. Potter took his students into the middle of a lake, threw them overboard and said, “Swim!”

She replied:

“No. He takes you to the tallest mountain he can find and says, ‘Fly!’”

I still like that.

But life doesn’t consist entirely of flying.

There are wildernesses too.

Mine included seventeen years at Hardin-Simmons University in Abilene.

That’s remarkable when I look back at it.

I had moved frequently throughout my life. Changed assignments. Changed institutions. Changed careers.

Then came Abilene.

From the summer of 2000 until 2017, I was there.

I was a full professor, tenured, and for two years chaired the department.

There were good students. There were accomplishments. Tanya and I had some interesting and beautiful places to live. Eventually we bought a lovely home in a wonderful neighborhood near the lake.

From the outside, much of it probably looked quite good.

Inside, I often experienced those years as wilderness.

I felt disconnected.

I’ve been trying to think of how to describe it.

Try this sometime.

Intertwine the fingers of your two hands naturally.

Notice which thumb rests on top.

Now separate your hands and intertwine your fingers again—but force the other thumb to be on top.

Nothing is technically wrong.

All the fingers are there.

Everything fits where it is supposed to fit.

But somehow—

it doesn’t feel right.

That is about as close as I can come to describing some of those years.

I was trying to clap, but somehow the hands weren’t connecting.

Tanya had retired when we left Alaska, and she became the wonderful keeper of our home. I labored at the university.

And I use the word labored intentionally.

We found much of our spiritual nourishment elsewhere, including traveling to Graham Cooke conferences.

There were students whose lives mattered to me. Some went on to remarkable things. I occasionally encounter them now on LinkedIn or Facebook.

But those years remain complicated memories.

Perhaps wilderness years usually are.

And maybe this is where today’s wandering has taken me.

For years I might have looked at my life as a collection of disconnected occupations.

Broadcaster.

Producer.

Professor.

Administrator.

Businessman.

Minister.

Writer.

Perhaps that is why I have sometimes described myself as a jack of many trades and master of none.

I’m beginning to wonder whether I’ve been reading my own story incorrectly.

Maybe the nouns kept changing while the verbs remained remarkably consistent.

Communicate.

Teach.

Build.

Equip.

Send.

I am not ready to make too much of that. I’m still gathering pieces.

This entire wandering began with the phrase wanna-be’s.

We ask children:

“What do you wanna be when you grow up?”

As though there should be one answer.

Doctor.

Teacher.

Fireman.

Broadcaster.

Preacher.

But perhaps a human life cannot always be reduced to a noun.

Perhaps some of us spend our lives becoming.

Some dreams are fulfilled.

Some fail.

Some are interrupted.

Some are surrendered.

Some destinations change while we’re walking toward them.

Some things we become very good at and then discover we are supposed to leave behind.

And some seasons that feel utterly wasted while we’re living them may look different when viewed from farther down the road.

I don’t know yet.

That’s why I’m wandering.

Maybe there is a book somewhere in all this.

Maybe a workbook about dreaming.

Maybe neither.

For once, I’m trying not to decide what something must become before I’ve allowed it to become.

At eighty-eight, I find myself looking backward—not simply to reminisce, and certainly not to construct a résumé.

I’m trying to see the path.

And perhaps to discover whether all those apparently unrelated pieces were more related than I knew.

The lawn crew has finished.

Tanya is up.

A fresh pot of coffee has just brewed.

That’s enough remembering for one morning.

There will be other pieces.

They seem to know how to find me.

Just wandering.