Need career advice

[sugar land dave]

Nice topic for discussion. I'm pretty old now and have seen a lot vis a vis work and careers. My thoughts about all this are:

1. The purpose of paid work is just to get paid. I have found that trying to find deep satisfaction at work or within a career is elusive and, if found, won't last long.

2. One's passions (sports, travel, music, even working in law enforcement) are best separated from work. That way one can pursue one's passions without having the constraint of money (which is always huge).

3. These days, too many of us are trying to find deep meaning in work ... when I went to college (and graduate school), I never heard the word 'career'. School used to be about finding out why we are put on this planet and getting the tools to carry out that mission.

In summary, I agree with some of the earlier posts ... keep your well-paying job and spend your non working time discovering why you ended up here. Don't waste your life focused on something as trivial as a career.

Good luck,

I'm lucky in that I love the work I do, and there is only two others in the state that do what I do. Computers? Been there, done that. Take the tech money and stash cash. Remember that tech crashed in 2000, and prepare a backup plan as if it was going to happen again. People called me lucky when I landed on my feet after the crash. My luck was planned.

If you are going to leave the green grass of IT, then plan, plan, plan ahead. Your family will appreciate a happier you only if the family financial future does not suffer significant loss.

[SQLGeek]

This thread really took off and again, I appreciate all of the honest, quality responses.

Purple, I somewhat fit into that category. My interests vary widely but prior to my "career", I held many jobs that I thoroughly enjoyed. I like your reserve officer suggestion and it is one thing I'm seriously considering, possibly either the Cost Guard or TX ANG. As I stated earlier, I'm not interested in jumping all over the place and don't want to be hasty about this decision at all.

Slick, I fit into the late 20's, 4 years experience category. I'd like to think I have a nice variety of outside of work activities when I'm not busy with the family. The hard part for me is not being miserable at work. I suck it up because I have to and do a good job (or so I'd like to think). What I'm trying to find is something at least a little more enjoyable or meaningful to me. Hard to do obviously in this economy while balancing everything else but that's the point of this thread...I'd like to try.

I've been doing a little more thinking and the idea of working towards a CPA is growing on me. That is something I'll research more, I think.

Thanks again everyone.