A Shy Man's Tale. Viewpoints: 8. C. Career
A Shy Man's Tale. Viewpoints: 8. C. Career
“The master in the art of living makes little distinction between his work and his play, his labor and his leisure, his mind and his body, his information and his recreation, his love and his religion. He hardly knows which is which. He simply pursues his vision of excellence at whatever he does, leaving others to decide whether he is working or playing. To him he's always doing both.” - James A. Michener
Is my career important to me? Yes. A career is more than your job. If you end up hating your job, dreading going to work, you don't have a career. You have a paycheck coming in, nothing more. I got to that point while working for Dow Chemical. During my seven years there there were six changes of management above me. Each one changed my research projects that I was working on. In industry, from the birth of an idea to commercialization, the process averages nine years. In other words, nothing I was working on was ever really given a chance at all. I was spinning my wheels. And they had me doing pure physical chemistry, something I am NOT a fan of...I'm an organometallic chemist. My knowledge of materials and valving for precision gas instruments was also being taken advantage of (I couldn't understand how the physical chemists could waste their time constructing instrumentation from sub-par components and then be upset when they didn't work. Put the right parts in at the start and it will work.). It was time for a change. I started looking for another job, and ended up at the University where I am now. It was a good fit in a good town. I ended up teaching my childhood dream, albeit not high school but college. I've been here over twenty years now, and I've enjoyed it.
A good career is nice but if you notice, in my list it is third, after God and family. that is because that is where it belongs. It shouldn't be all consuming. It should be interesting. There is much more to life than just working at your career.
“A career is wonderful, but you can't curl up with it on a cold night.” - Marilyn Monroe
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