Here is the deal. You get to swap your current job for any other job in the world within reason (you can’t be the current President of the United States on demand for example). You have to work at least as much as you do now, you don’t get any additional benefits and your pay remains the same as if you stayed with your old job.
This isn’t a job genie thread either. The job has to exist in the real-world, there has to be some real demand for it and you have to become truly qualified to do it well in some short period of time.
In general, that is going to mean that most people are going to need to pick a job lower in prestige than they currently do. If you are a CEO, you can become an apprentice winemaker but you cannot run the whole operation until you know what you are doing. If you are a neurosurgeon, you can become a high school teacher and keep your pay but you still have to fulfill all the same requirements all the rest of them do.
I didn’t give my answer. I have always wanted to be a bush pilot that flies small groups of people or supplies to remote areas. That job encapsulates just about everything I love except many of the routes are in the Northern climes like Alaska. I think I might be able to do that or simply go for the Caribbean routes. Unfortunately, aviation is all about exorbitant start-up and operational costs combined with a very long time to payoff if ever. If I was guaranteed my current salary to just do it, I would do it in a second.
An alternate job would be a ferry pilot who has to fly small planes from the U.S. to their new owners all over the world. That requires some extreme routing to accomplish especially along the Pacific routes due to their limited range but it can be a grand adventure. It is also quite boring most of the time it isn’t terrifying and life-threatening but I can live with that.
Easy. I would teach high school chemistry and/or physics. I taught both of these subjects for several years at a military prep school (getting military active-duty pay), and it was one of the best jobs I ever had. I was recognized as “science instructor of the year” twice, and overall “instructor of the year” once.
Unfortunately, though, high school science teachers don’t get paid anywhere near the same as engineers, so when I got out of the military, I went into engineering. While I like my current job a lot, and the pay is good, it’s not nearly as rewarding as teaching was for me.
There’s a big part of me that would love to run events for charities. That can pay well at the very highest levels, but I don’t expect much locally.
It’s something I’ve thought about as what I’d do if money was no longer an issue for me. I’ve done it a few times in my spare time, and I’m apparently decent enough at it.
I always say the best job I ever had was when I was 15, and was the arts and crafts counselor at a summer camp. It was a very low budget type of camp, so it wasn’t like I had fancy supplies, most of the crafts involved things like pine cones we found in the woods, and paper plates, and melting down old grubby crayons. I was AWESOME at this, I thought up really good crafts that were fun to do (if you are nine years old).
I don’t even want to be an art TEACHER, because that seems like it would involve educational standards and pedagogy and stuff like that. But arts and crafts camp counselor, that gig rocked. I would do that again in a heartbeat for my current salary.
Well they are getting far and fewer in demand But I would jump at the chance to work as a lighthouse keeper. Alternatively I could always just buy a lighthouse.
I think I would be a good lawyer, perhaps a Public Defender in US terms. But really, I’d want to be a commercial airline pilot. I am not, of course, in any way qualified to do either of those jobs and the training might take quite some time.
In the real world, I could be a UK welfare rights adviser with not too much training. I’d be good at it and I would enjoy it, but it sure as hell won’t make me rich. But I would enjoy it and find it fulfilling.
Science writer who specializes in biohacking and neurohacking.
Aside from that, some job where I am part of a team and I am valuable to and valued by others. I don’t know what that would be though. If that would be helping with development, or poverty, or some other social issue.
When you retire you can volunteer at a lighthouse. We know folks who do this and love the job. They get a free camping site and stay for 3 months a year.
Architect. It’s what I always wanted to be as a kid, and what I began studying in college, but got sidetracked in several directions. I still think I’d be a great one. But I’d have to brush up on a lot of math, just to get back to the college freshman level.
I’ve been an actor/theatre maker and I’ve worked in orphanages, I was good at both. Both are fantastic and I would do it again in a heartbeat if there were money involved in any way.
As it is, I am working on my master’s so that I’ll have a little piece of paper that says I can do things that people value. We’ll see how that goes…
Learned how to spit shine a good pair of traditional Red Wing boots so I might be a shine boy in a posh hotel as a second career. I can sharpen my Spyderco knives till they can split a free-hanging strand of hair twice. Now who would want that?
I would be a luthier. I have been working with wood for many years, and I have been learning guitar for about the same length of time. I have always dreamed of building high quality classical guitars and fancy jazz archtop guitars.
In order to achieve this I would need to trick out my wood shop quite a bit and go to one or more of those master luthier courses. I’m pretty confident that nobody would want my first few guitars, but at some point they would become good enough to charge obscene amounts of money for, and possibly live off of.
Another thread reminded me of the satisfaction and sense of fulfillment I felt as a suicide hotline volunteer for ten years. At times I was doing two phone shifts per week, and I thought “If only this kind of work would pay the bills…”
But then again maybe not. At one point we contracted another organization to backfill our late shifts: those counselors were paid a nominal wage, while we were volunteers. Take one guess which folks were preferred by our callers.
The most fun I’ve ever had at a job was probably in college, working as a writing tutor. I got paid a little above minimum wage, but I worked with students who were sufficiently engaged in their education to seek out help, and I had some wonderful conversations with these folks. It was awesome.
Something to do with food, but not a chef (the day-to-day work of cooking the same thing over and over, the physical demands, and the crazy hours don’t do it for me). Something like an artisinal cheese maker, or start a business making dry-cured sausages. Wine maker, maybe, but that seems less desirable than the other two.
That, or something that has me traveling a lot, for something pleasurable. Something like travel guide for food and wine related tours. Yeah, that’d be fun!
I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have taken that route in my 20s instead of where I’m at now. I certainly thought about it. I know myself well enough, though, that if I had, I’d probably be writing the opposite right now - “I’d do something where I could play with computers and technology all day. Maybe a programmer.”
I would like to lead humanitarian missions to various un/under developed areas around the world. Need a well? On our way! No school building? Here we come! Identify the need, corral volunteers and supplies, and get the job done! Lather, rinse, repeat.
