Here’s the deal - you’ve decided that you’re tired of the rat race, or retirement, or the boredom if idle wealth. You want a job, but it can’t be too much like work.
There is an available position doing what you consider to be an easy job and it’s yours for the taking. What is that job? Why do you count it as easy?
Me first, since I started this.
It was the last job I had before retiring - CAD drafter. I’d worked as an engineer for 26 years before retiring the first time, and out of boredom, I decided to go back to work. Over the course of about 8 years, I had four different drafting jobs - mostly mechanical, tho a couple included some electrical drafting - using 3 different CAD software packages.
They were easy because I didn’t have to do any of the engineering. I didn’t have to go to meetings. I didn’t have to make decisions or deal with vendors. I just took the tasks from the engineers and made drawings for them. And having been an engineer, I occasionally did some minor design work and modeling when needed.
It was mentally engaging and personally rewarding without being stressful (well, except for the one temp job where I had to deal with this psycho woman…) and it paid well. If I get bored with retirement again, I’d go back to that in a heartbeat.
Dishwasher, but only the part where you take the dirty tableware and put in on a tray and put it through the Hobart. None of the scrubbing pans for me, thanks.
I’ve actually been pondering what you described. Basically radically changing careers. To what, I have no idea.
For 25 years, I’ve spent my career working in various client-facing project-based corporate jobs. Usually related somehow to technology, finance, and various business operations for all sorts of companies. I just find it boring.
I have a number of friends and former colleagues who have dropped out of corporate life to do thinks like sell real estate, career counselling, start a business selling wine or cigars or T-shirts or whatever their fucking hobby is, run a charity, so on and so forth. I don’t know how much of these are “real” businesses in the sense of being profitable going concerns that allow them to earn an actual living.
I want to be the guy that sits in the drawbridge tower all day and waits for a boat to come by. I’ll stop the traffic and open the bridge, then reverse the process. In between openings, I’ll look at the water.
That is basically the same as my current corporate job. Instead of opening a bridge, I respond to an email or jump on a Zoom or Webex call. In between I just stare out the window at the Hudson River.
I do like the idea of travelling around to places checking stuff out. Kind of like that show where Norman Reedus tours around various countries on motorcycle with his Hollywood buddies. It’s actually not that far off from my actual job (pre COVID-19), except I only mostly get to see some office parks and maybe a local chain restaurant after spending all day sitting in meetings.
I’ve done quite a bit of computer programming over the years. I fell into it because I was depressed and dysfunctional at the time, and it’s so much easier than my degree qualification. It’s also not manual labor – so I can pick it up easily without having to get fit – it’s not boring and repetitive – so I can handle it for long periods – and it’s not inherently stressful – although I’ve never had a job that I thought was inherently stressful, so I don’t know much about that – and doesn’t require hand skills – because I haven’t got any of those.
Not a system architect or project lead. Just a guy taking specifications and typing at a desk.
College consulting, if someone else would do the client finding.
Teaching economics in a school where nothing else was expected of me. English is my main gig, and it’s 10x the work. If I could just teach 6 sections of econ a day and go home, it’d feel like working part time.
I literally had that job for a couple of years, though it was a swing bridge. Once went 5 months without a boat on my shift. Now am a tenured liberal arts professor. Except for the Low pay and lack of a pension, bridgetender was better: I got to read and write, just as I do now, but no administrators to deal with.
Scoring standardized tests essays and open response items. I’ve been doing it since 2001. I’ll happily do it as long as I have eyesight, I don’t even look at the pay rate before accepting a project.
This is not high school English class. Users are not graded on proper spelling and grammar. Slang and shorthanded spellings are acceptable.
Junior modding is not acceptable. Do not tell others what to post or how to post.
If you are bothered by someone’s slang or shorthand to the point where you feel you must post about it, you know where the Pit is. If common internet/texting shorthand bothers you that much, again, you know where the Pit is.
