My father in law used to say that he was working on his second million....having given up all hope of his first. I think that the people who can avail themselves of the articles about 'your second career' are those who were actually able to get it...and then some. Like the ad I saw in Fortune magazine, several years ago, which showed the distinguished yet virile elderly man leaning thoughtfully on a fence rail, gazing into the distance. The caption was 'When it comes time for you to be put out to pasture....make sure you own the pasture.'
Nevertheless, the idea of a 'second career' is a seductive one. Again referring to popular culture, I'm reminded of a Doonesbury strip years ago where an exasperated father is asking just when his sun is planning on getting a job. The son calmly retorts that he already knows what kind of job he wants -- one without pressure, with co-workers who are interesting yet mellow - the father interrupts. "You're not planning on getting a job, are you?" Thats the second career I want. One where you do it for the pleasure of it, not the paycheck of it. Not necessarily one thats easy, or one where you can take your sweet time, coming in when you want, leaving when you want, but one that delights you. One that you'd do for free.
One thing I've noticed in the articles about people who have these jobs is that they almost entirely fall into one category, and those that do not, almost entirely fall into a second category. The first category is that they're unskilled relative to the first profession that the person held. Thus, former accountants take up collecting and selling rare books; former lawyers take up cultivating orchids. The new careers require experience and expertise, but not formal training as did the first. And if the second careers are in fact skilled ones, then the person doing them had already been doing them to some extent -- the doctor had been studying network systems in his spare time; the lawyer was already a private pilot and decided to do it full time. In almost no case does the former blue collar worker decide to take up something that requires time, training, and/or resources.
I heard once that the reason adults ask kids what they want to be when they grow up is that the adults are still working on the answer to that question. At least in my case, thats true. Part of the reason is that for much of my life I actually believed those articles about finding the perfect job -- one that fulfilled you, one where they needed you. I blush to think of that now -- and, like so many others, I have a Dilbert under the glass of my desk at home to remind me of that folly.
Yet I still want to believe that it's possible, even if 'just' as a second career.
3 comments:
Hi Bill,
I believe it's possible, no matter what. I wouldn't be a coach if I didn't! A great book to read on this is Po Bronson's "What Should I Do With My Life?" It's not a how-to, or what-to, but one man's exploration of the question including lots of interviews and no easy answers.
It's clear from your writing that you have got all the smarts you need to do whatever you want. Life is short - go for it!
Cheers
Joanna
ok, I'll DO it -- I'll go for that bellydancing certification! (g)
Seriously, I think you're onto something there. For all of the constraints that reality places on what we can do and where, I think the most restrictive are the ones that we place on ourselves.
It took me a surprisingly long time to come to that awareness, and I'm still pretty much bound by them. But I know about them now, and I can work to loosen them.
Even if just a bit.
Pity that the local hospital still won't let me scrub in, though.
I discovered that fixing airplanes was interesting, but I could not keep up with learning entirely new planes and entirely new technology every couple of years. And any mistake would be the end of my career. When your career is on the line, you feel constrained to learn the thing really really thoroughly, only to have it go obsolete right about the time you get familiar with it. Fine...mine was not the only field which was a constant round of "catch up". The kicker was that we always spent time in "servicing", getting away from the heavy maintenance, and just fueling, parking and de-bugging the planes out on the tarmac. This was where we saw the passengers going up the stairs, and actually flying on the very same airframe that I wasn't quite certain I knew everything about. It was always a tickle in the back of my mind "what will happen to this bird that you didn't know to anticipate? By sheer luck, though things happened on systems I had no idea existed let alone knew how to fix, they happened to other people, not me. Rowan and Martin had the "Fickle Finger of Fate" award they presented on their show...I pretty much managed to avoid it. Pretty much.
20 years of that, and I was outa there! I have had several job offers, some for a LOT of money. But I will never ever again put myself in the position where people trust their lives to me....unless I have all the time in the world to learn every possible aspect about what could go wrong and know exactly how to prevent it.
Driving would be a good example. I don't think there is anything new to me after 28 years of driving from Ottawa to Toronto every month.
My case may be atypical....but I am happy to be making body armour for wanna-be knights at Ren Faires and pounding away happily on an anvil in my backyard shop. Living off my non-indexed pension, shop tours, and 4 hour work days.
I occassionally wistfully watch the aircraft take off at the airfield up the road, but I know too much about them to see them as sleek machines enfolding themselves in their element...rather they are oily, overstressed, sharp edged, overpowered products of the lowest bidder.
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