How much do you think your career has shaped the person you have become?

[fastfredracing]

Im getting older and pondering lots of stuff lately . I used to be a pretty happy go lucky sort of guy. Lived life to the fullest, made sure to stop and smell the roses. was always chasing my dreams, w pretty easy going, and kind to people, you know, stuff like that.
Running my own gig for all these years , has taken a toll on me. Sometimes, I think that I don't like the person I have become, and that somewhere deep down in there is the old Fred, but I gotta do what I gotta do do keep all the balls up in the air.

[VincentVega]

Might be time to hire that shop manager/front end person

work to live or live to work, your choice

[Porsche-O-Phile]

Too much. As I get older the less I'm interested in continuing to be a slave to a paycheck, especially when I seem to be able to keep less and less of it for myself each year. There are way more important things in life. As long as I can keep a roof over my head, buy groceries and realize a way of life that's reasonably comfortable for me and those depending on me, I think I'm good. I'm more interested in pursuing things I actually like for myself.

Really, really want to go do my own thing / open my own practice. It's nice to have security, benefits, steady paycheck, etc. but I'm kinda getting to a point of saying eff all that - it's not worth putting up with corporate dumbassery and wasting the best hours of my day making someone else rich.

[stomachmonkey]

I think as we grow older and accumulate more responsibility we become a bit hardened.

Was a time when I'd wake up and just decide to call into work and take a week off then drive to the airport and hop a flight to Germany and see Oma for a couple of days then hop a train to Switzerland and go glacier skiing.

I was the only one I had to worry about.

As time goes on you get involved with relationships, move up the corp ladder, acquire property, etc...

If you have empathy then you recognize that some of those people in your lives are to some degree co-dependent. Your actions affect them and their well being and that affects you and can cause internal conflict or stress.

You've also experienced more challenges and lose some of your utopian outlook and become more jaded, guarded. It takes a toll on some of that free sprit.

You also learn to recognize bull**** much faster and become skeptical. Your patience starts to suffer.

I think it's all a natural progression of life and accumulated experience.

The trick is to recognize those things that may cause you to "stop being yourself" and either remove or limit their influence on your day to day life.

[scottmandue]

"Inside every old person is a young person asking, what the he11 happened?!?"
My first real job was working in the family HVAC business... it was he11 on wheels, worked with my dad and older brother who were verbally abusive... and the job was brutally physical... I drank and smoked a lot of weed to deal with the physical and mental pain. On the plus side I learned sheet metal, carpentry, plumbing so I can now fix almost anything around the house.
At thirty years old I escaped that job, went back to school and got a two year degree in electronics, only job I could find at the time was through friends as a computer tech (waste of a two year degree but it was work) bounced around in tech jobs for five years or so... learned a lot about computers that they didn't teach in school.
Between jobs saw an ad for a tech job at the Science Museum, I applied, interviewed, was accepted... but it is a state job so took several months for them to "do the paperwork".
Got to work and the supervisor was a megalomaniac arshwhole... I needed the job so I put up with him... I out lasted him... he was replaced by a great guy... who got promoted and now I work with a anal retentive micromanager supervisor, annoying but livable.

All that to say... most definitely yes my career(s) have shaped me (for better or worse), I would not be handy around the house if I had not endured the family biz for ten years... I would not be handy with computers (which got me this state job) without the tech job... I'll never get rich working at the museum but I will never go hungry either.

[vash]

i think i've gotten nerdier. i blame work, or the work nerds that surround me at work.

THANK GOD, i have some badass hobbies!!

[IROC]

Originally Posted by stomachmonkey

I think as we grow older and accumulate more responsibility we become a bit hardened.

I think the magic word here is "responsibility". It has been my experience that responsibility is inversely proportional to spontaneity. And that goes for career, financial, family, etc. responsibilities.

I think responsibility is an anchor that drags you down.

Maybe more to the point of the OP, my career as an engineer has definitely shaped me as a person. I am very practical and analytical in every aspect of my life due to the fact that my job requires that behavior.

[scottmandue]

Originally Posted by vash

i think i've gotten nerdier. i blame work, or the work nerds that surround me at work.

THANK GOD, i have some badass hobbies!!

Nerdy? Pfft! At least you get to drive a truck and build bridges! I'm a tech at a science museum! No one is nerdier than I! I used to BE somebody... I could have been a contender!

[aschen]

I am sort of an engineer by blood more than by training or profession.


I am definitely much more driven by data than emotion (maybe that is polite for detached?), due to the job and training however. I would really struggle if I was more dependent on softer sciences or interpersonal skills

[VincentVega]

Maybe more to the point of the OP, my career as an engineer has definitely shaped me as a person. I am very practical and analytical in every aspect of my life due to the fact that my job requires that behavior.

Interesting. Do you think you chose the career because of who/what you are? Or did the chosen career mold you into what you are today?

[berettafan]

Neat question OP!

I can't answer it...too much introspection required...but I HOPE I could say 'very little'.

[SCadaddle]

I've found that as the years have passed by I'm no longer similar to Jeffery Lebowski but more like Walter Sobchak.

[IROC]

Originally Posted by VincentVega

Interesting. Do you think you chose the career because of who/what you are? Or did the chosen career mold you into what you are today?

A little bit of both. I think I was destined to be an engineer before I even knew "what I wanted to be when I grew up". I didn't know any engineers as a kid and didn't even know what engineers did. Now I are one.

I work in a cutting-edge facility filled with people who are literally tops in their fields in the world. Intellectually, I am challenged every single day (and not afraid to admit that). We deal with things that no one in the world has ever done before, so it is a constant battle to analytically and quantifiably define what we know and what we don't know in the pursuit of figuring out what the heck is going on. Now I find myself applying these same techniques to why my lawnmower doesn't idle correctly or the most efficient way to get ready for work in the morning. It drives my wife nuts sometimes.

[wdfifteen]

Great question.
I started my own businesses so I could make "who I am" shape my career and not vice-versa. It hasn't exactly worked out that way, but I'm a very different person than if I'd continued to be a wage slave. I guess the big difference is that I feel like I've earned more respect as an entrepreneur - you could say I have more "pride" in my accomplishments.
The only regret I have over the path I've taken is that I was on the way to having a patent with my name on it when I left the lab. I still think it would be cool to have my name on a patent.

[dan88911]

Retired now 3yrs. I worked 38 +yrs. if you count various the jobs held when I was kid.
Over the yrs. I work with a lot bosses who were "A" holes. I think some were that way because they got treated like Sh** as they moved up the ladder. Go figure.
I decided when the time came and I called the shots I would not be that A hole.

When I got there I had a good team with good morale and we still got the work done.

[GH85Carrera]

For the first 30 year of my career I did for a living what a lot of people do for a hobby. Lots of people back then ran home to work in a darkroom and make prints. Now very few do it with silver based products, it is almost all digital.

No one rushes home through rush hour traffic to go put new roofs on houses just for fun or pours concrete as a hobby.

[sammyg2]

how much do you think your career has shaped the person you have become?

12.87%

[tadd]

Too much :-(.

Used to want to save the world with science. Too many politics squashed good work that brains blood and tears were put into. That and bosses that just whip you advance their own agendas.

Now its just hard to be motivated.

Still have a hard time with politics and good ideas going nowhere.

I need to win lotto and have my own lab :-).

[glewis80SC]

I have learned not to take it all so serious and try not to take each day for granted because you just never know...stop and smell the roses. Both my parents passing away over the past couple years was a huge effect on that too.
The reverse side i have no tolerance for people that are full of **** and take no responsibility for their own actions also those that are deliberately cruel to others.

[Hugh R]

Started out with a BS in Environmental Engineering in 1979 from UMASS, Amherst (the 'h" is silent, BTW). Wanted to save the Earth, or something. Landed in environmental, health and safety consulting for about 25 years, and found I was more helping industry than anything else.

For the last 15 years, I've been doing motion picture and television production safety for a major studio (think mouse), and I truly love it. I've traveled the World, like 30 countries and 20-30 states. I get paid to go places most people could only dream of visiting. I get paid to watch people fire all kinds of weapons, blow schit up, and wreck stuff!

I get frequent flier miles as well, and I've taken the wifey to London, Prague, Istanbul, Brisbane, the Bahamas, Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, Key West, NYC, Boston and a few other places where my travel is 100% paid for and her tagging along costs me virtually nothing. I just sent the wifey today to NYC on FF miles to visit my daughter and grandson's No. 1 & 2. I'm 61 and in pretty good health, so the travel doesn't bother me much.

Did I say that I get paid to do this? A pretty good amount of coin to boot.