Doing What You Love

"But have you or an associate found yourself disliking a technical job enough to make the jump to a completely different profession?"

I have had "jobs" that I did not like, however, a job is different than a career. If you think one job is worth throwing the baby out with the bathwater you will be changing careers like underwear.

Then real learning in life starts after pursuing a career. One can not undertake jobs even though it is of relevance to his/ her qualification. Most of the people prefer jobs of their liking. Whereas a shear common sense and basic education can help to perform jobs of any level, pertaining to my case I was deliberate in choosing what I liked doing.

Having done under graduation in textiles- I preferred a job as a colourist, the tenure which I enjoyed for nearly 15 years.

With few insights developed I tried venture on self learned chemistry.

With more concern on environmental aspects I got qualified in Ecology, environment and sustainable development. Now my journey goes on into Sustainable Green energy solutions, clean energy utilities and applications. The real catalyst in the process in my opinion could be,

* There is a satisfaction in doing what we like.

*There is more scope for contributions than routine jobs.

*Jobs without involvement, thrill and challenges are dead jobs.

*There should be always something new to learn about.

* Additional knowledge in related disciplines is of great support in handling higher responsibilities.

* getting specialization will make you different from others thereby giving the cutting edge difference.

*Everything on this world is for learning, understanding, contributing and applying. One should not confine to a particular field and become obsolete after sometime.

* An extra knowledge surely is a timely facilitator in many ways. Man has unlimited potentials to learn and perform-rather sky is the limit provided little learned is better understood.

* In the modern era of information technology and wide spread knowledge hood, we got to keep sharpening our knowledge faculty.

* The newer the field, thrill and enthusiasm are inbuilt gadgets.

* Last but not least is the urge of necessity.

Exploration!

I am a 48-year-old engineer and still don't know what I am gonna do when I grow up.

Having changed jobs several times over the past 20 years, I have become a well-rounded and experienced engineer (jack of many trades). I think a driver has been that the jobs became stale. I wanted more, different, challenging. In my observation, many organizations claim "innovative" or "continuous process improvement" but only on paper. So to improve myself, I learn from a variety of jobs.

Where I live, engineering jobs have become scarcer and scarcer. The big established employers have left, or have outsourced almost everything. A few entrepreneurs tried to start new engineering businesses, but are not hiring much because they're barely hanging on. The last straw for a buddy of mine was, after almost a year of unemployment, he thought that he had landed a promising engineering position. However, instead of the design and development job that he thought he was getting, he was informed that management changed their minds. His job would only be a three month contract, and he was supposed to go to India and train a bunch of non-degreed workers how to use CAD to do design and development. He walked right out the door and never looked back. Now he runs a sandwich shop. It isn't what he dreamed about doing, but what was available at the time. After doing it for a few months he really likes it, and the lower stress level more than makes up for the lower salary. Meanwhile, that silly former (one day) employer has shut down. Boo hoo to them.