![\"train\"](\"https:\/\/magazine.owen.vanderbilt.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/15\/legacy\/2011\/05\/train.jpg\" "\\"train\\"")
When I was younger and trying to decide on a career path, I briefly thought of going into business for myself. It was an admirable, if short-lived, dream, but in retrospect I\u2019m a little dismayed that I even considered it. Time has taught me that I just don\u2019t have the entrepreneurial itch\u2014or the guts, frankly\u2014to strike out on my own.<\/p>\n
Oilman J. Paul Getty once said, \u201cGoing to work for a large company is like getting on a train. Are you going 60 miles an hour, or is the train going 60 miles an hour and you\u2019re just sitting still?\u201d Me, I\u2019m the type of person who\u2019s perfectly content riding the train.<\/p>\n
Yet what\u2019s more puzzling about my thought process back then isn\u2019t that I considered starting my own business but rather the field it was to be in. The seed for the idea started with my grandfather, who ran his own civil engineering firm in Huntsville, Ala. I\u2019d grown up admiring his accomplishments, and it seemed only natural to do something similar with my life. I think he would have liked nothing more than for me to follow in his footsteps, whether by taking over his business or opening an engineering firm of my own.<\/p>\n
Of course that was assuming I had the technical skills to embark on such a career\u2014which I didn\u2019t. As much as I enjoyed looking over my grandfather\u2019s shoulder at blueprints he was working on, I can\u2019t fathom doing the math his job required.<\/p>\n
Life, though, has a funny way of coming full circle. All these years later I\u2019m getting to live out my childhood dream, albeit vicariously, through my wife, Victoria, a professional mechanical engineer. This past fall she started her own company, which specializes in sustainable building design. Having watched her get the business off the ground, I\u2019ve come to believe that being a spouse of an entrepreneur is probably the closest thing to actually being an entrepreneur oneself. I\u2019ve shared in the good times when work is plentiful and sweated the moments when funds are stretched pretty thin.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless I wouldn\u2019t change a thing about these past few months. I\u2019m immensely proud of my wife for daring to do something that I\u2019d only dreamed about, and if anything, her enterprising spirit has rubbed off on me. I\u2019m now more mindful of how entrepreneurs think, and in some small part this has carried over to my own job.<\/p>\n