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Career Choices You Wish You Had Made?.


galenkia

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No matter what career I would've chose, I'd have f***d it up due do being an active drug addict from sniffing glue at 13 or 14 onwards. Drugs, whatever type, always came before anything else. 

And ironically enough, my previous active addiction years has seen me now have what i would class as a job I love and being well paid to do it. 

My life still revolves all around drugs, but in a different way these days 😄

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16 minutes ago, Krapow said:

No matter what career I would've chose, I'd have f***d it up due do being an active drug addict from sniffing glue at 13 or 14 onwards. Drugs, whatever type, always came before anything else. 

And ironically enough, my previous active addiction years has seen me now have what i would class as a job I love and being well paid to do it. 

My life still revolves all around drugs, but in a different way these days 😄

Good thing about the Navy is your at sea a lot so away from temptation. I started out on glue as well, around 12/13 as well.

Looks like we took a similar path.

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On the whole happy with the choices I made. A few bad ones on the way, but even the jobs I hated I learnt from and got good experience, that helped me move onto better things.

Got into gambling very young. Did a paper round for a week, f*****g hated it. Can remember getting paid £7, for the first week.

Had an older lad put the £7 on Grittar in the 1982 National, got 8s- got £63 back, resigned the next day😀

Never fancied glue though😇

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I scored a transfer from an overseas assignment to the largest and best research and engineering center in the company.  I had worked there before and was thrilled.  I decided I'd be able to finish out my career there in about 15 years, so I bought a house seven miles from campus.

Quite a few years later they wanted me to take over a problem project at a center 35 miles away.  It was in a remote location due to the products we designed and built there.  It also had the reputation of being extremely reluctant to let effective people transfer out, because no-one wanted to work out there.

I dug in my heels and the VP of Product Development out of corporate flew in to talk me into it.  I pointed out my concerns and he emphasized the importance of the project to the company, said he was sure I'd wrap it up in a year, and he'd ensure I got transferred back to the main campus when I did.

I took the assignment, finished the project, but that VP had jumped ship to one of our clients.  I retired, still at the remote location, six years later.

:default_2guns:

 

 

 

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I was lucky, I got a good job with a big telecom company when I was only 18 and basically stuck with it, retiring at 55; however there have been times when I wished that I could have done something different. When I left high school I wanted to follow in my father's footsteps and become a heavy duty mechanic - no university for me! - but our local economy was in a downturn at the time and there were no apprenticeships available so my dad pulled a few strings and got me a trainee power lineman position in Alberta - this could have led to a good career but the people I was working for were such a bunch of redneck assholes that I only lasted a couple of months and then was lucky to score the telecom job instead. 

In hindsight I sometimes wish I had become an electrician instead because it is much more of a craft than what I was doing with the telecom firm, but as an electrician you end up having to do too much construction work for much of your career (or for some, all of it) and this puts you at the mercy of the economy. Same with the HD mechanic job - unless you can get a job with a big equipment dealer or the gov't, you end up working mostly in fly-in mining camps; although I did meet one fellow canuck in BKK who had done this work all over the world and now is semi-retired with a nice place in Hua Hin. 

When I first started travelling to Thailand the people I really envied were the off-shore oil workers - go to some exotic locale and work for a month or so and then enjoy your days off in Pattaya - seemed to be a great life to me; although I wonder how some of them are doing now after all of the travel BS over the last couple of years. Also, this type of job - like the fly-in mining jobs - can lead one into the trap of blowing all of your savings during your days off so you may be having a good time but you're really not getting ahead in life. 

 

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3 hours ago, Krapow said:

No matter what career I would've chose, I'd have f***d it up due do being an active drug addict from sniffing glue at 13 or 14 onwards. Drugs, whatever type, always came before anything else. 

And ironically enough, my previous active addiction years has seen me now have what i would class as a job I love and being well paid to do it. 

My life still revolves all around drugs, but in a different way these days 😄

The reason I quoted you is because we just don't know where and how our lives takes us. 

I failed my Commissions Board in 74, but a good bloke that later became "H Jones"  steered me in a different direction. Although doing pretty damned good on the Brecons it wasn't until I had shed myself of the bitterness of rejection that 10 years later  I was asked to join special forces.

And this is so fucking important..... I was asked to join...... I didn't volunteer.

As you know I had experienced "burnt sausages" and many more things as "Green Army" but my life working with The  Det has left me with a greater appreciation of my own security.

Subsequently I like living happily by myself  in a little corner of Pattaya where nobody knows me.

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As a kid I wanted to be involved in aviation & also wanted to travel so joining the RAF was really a no brainer.

I wanted to be an air traffic controller but thankfully I had to sit a test which showed I had some practical ability plus half a brain so they said I should be a techie.If I'd gone ATC then I'd have been a clerk as the actual ATC officers are just that & I didn't have the qualifications.

After the RAF I worked for the Saudi AF & then the Omani.

I made a couple of bad decisions once I got my civvie licences but nothing that drastic and made a decent living and travelled extensively until my retirement.

So I wouldn't change a thing.

And I have to add that I made a lot of good friends on the way!

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I wouldnt change the job I chose, but would change the way I approached it.

Left college qualified at 22, and started in an establishment where I remained for 30 years. With hindsight I should have changed establishments at least once, probably twice, but....

When the management changed after 22 years, my face didnt fit.... I was old, experienced and expensive, and not young, attractive and female. Ok, I'm sure the female bit didnt come into the equation, but...

After 8 years of being told I'd gone from a top employee to rubbish over night, I started to believe it, my mental health fell apart, and i got out. They replaced me with 2, ironically young, female, newly qualified.... cheap, and inexperienced, one of whom was sacked and struck off after a month.

Not regretted the getting out for one minute!

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 I wanted to be a lawyer.  they earned 20K a year when I left school and I would probably have been quite good at it, if I had bothered to make the effort to study it.  but I was a rebel, and so..went and worked on a farm.  for 13 quid a week. 

 

moving on from that rather smelly craeer move, I worked all over the world for an american mob, finally as a trouble shooter, fixing serious fuckups, and was making a killing, but, it was the golden handcuffs.  the rebel kicked in, and I quit to start a grey market export op that did very well... blah blah etc.. 

back to the Uk and restarted as Fred in a shed , in a little business I built up and later sold, to retire at 50.  hated that after a few months and after moving here started the radio station. 

despite being the popular station, thanks to covid, it has eaten my savings 

BUT..thanks to the previous life, I still eat and live and survive.  AND if I could go back, ... I probably wouldnt change a thing really.  I have always been my own boss, ( which isnt as cool as it sounds BTW)  and the rebel.. remains within me still

i would have made a good lawyer tho 🙂

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Enjoyed the job for a long time but it’s more of a grind now although I get very well paid. Would like to exit the corporate game within 5 years if I can and take a lower paid more chilled out job. Never been one that dreamed of retirement, happy to still do something…..

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Like most endeavors, I believe if you enjoy the work you'll probably be successful at what you do.

In my case that meant an early interest in computers and programming led to a successful career in the IT field. I was lucky too the field lends itself well for remote work which in turn allowed me to semi-retire in Thailand at age 52.

Before starting down that career path though I had considered enlisting in the military. Even talked to a recruiter and took the entrance exam. Scored quite high, so could have had my pick of a career field.

For a couple of reasons I decided not to enlist. I don't regret the choice, but do wonder sometimes how my life would have turned out if I choose a military career. I like to think I would have been successful in that too, and quite possibly still have ended up retiring in Thailand at the end of that career.

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20 minutes ago, forcebwithu said:

Like most endeavors, I believe if you enjoy the work you'll probably be successful at what you do.

In my case that meant an early interest in computers and programming led to a successful career in the IT field. I was lucky too the field lends itself well for remote work which in turn allowed me to semi-retire in Thailand at age 52.

Before starting down that career path though I had considered enlisting in the military. Even talked to a recruiter and took the entrance exam. Scored quite high, so could have had my pick of a career field.

For a couple of reasons I decided not to enlist. I don't regret the choice, but do wonder sometimes how my life would have turned out if I choose a military career. I like to think I would have been successful in that too, and quite possibly still have ended up retiring in Thailand at the end of that career.

Think your first sentence is bang on, you need the passion for the job to be 100 percent motivated to succeed.

 

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2 minutes ago, galenkia said:

Think your first sentence is bang on, you need the passion for the job to be 100 percent motivated to succeed.

Along the same vein, I've always believed if you work hard to deliver a good product or service, the bottom line would take care of itself.

Worked for me the years I had my own business. I also saw how it didn't work well the few years I worked at an international software/consulting company. Any time profits took a dip, the bean counters and corp bigwigs first reaction was to bang on about cutting expenses, rather than addressing the problem which was a product that wasn't adapting to changing customer needs.

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Well double edged sword really.

I met my Mrs through my current job, so a different career path might have seen me miss out on the best thing that ever happened to me.

If the above wasn't a factor, then I'd have liked to have been a Pilot in the RAF. All those 5 star hotels, sipping Gin and Tonics , dapper uniform and epic moustaches, then retire early and go into civvie street flying Passenger 747's, all those 5 star Hotels, sipping gin and tonics, dapper uniform, epic moustaches and listening out for the tell tale snap of an Air Hostess's knicker elastic...

 

Edited by Butch
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10 minutes ago, Butch said:

Well double edged sword really.

I met my Mrs through my current job, so a different career path might have seen me miss out on the best thing that ever happened to me.

If the above wasn't a factor, then I'd have liked to have been a Pilot in the RAF. All those 5 star hotels, sipping Gin and Tonics , dapper uniform and epic moustaches, then retire early and go into civvie street flying Passenger 747's, 5 star Hotels, sipping gin and tonics, dapper uniform, epic moustaches and listening out for the tell tale snap of an Air Hostess's knicker elastic...

 

Can just picture you as Rick Mayalls character Flashart in 'Blackadder Goes Forth'. 🤣

 

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On 5/31/2022 at 10:30 AM, Sangsom said:

Being a pimp, free unlimited pussy.

Back in October 2006 I was honorary  pussy tester for Secrets and had business cards to prove it.

Unfortunately, in December 2006 I got the sack for under performance.

It was good whilst it lasted.🤣

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