Yup. One of the things of which I most marvel, is how long our professional lives are, even if we didn't start working until after college. Graduate at 22, and 30 years later, you're only 52. That's a full decade until "normal" retirement.... At the very least I got a new set of experiences and memories I never would have had in my old Groundhog Day existence.
Let's unpack this... 30 years, likely with the same employer, or at least the same field. Smith is an electrical engineer, with an EE from Georgia Tech or Purdue or Texas A&M. Smith goes to work for Lockheed or Raytheon. Smith sees over a dozen bosses, multiple re-orgs, slogans going from edgy and controversial to ascendant to conventional to boring to passé, and then refreshed again. Technology changes, but then again, it doesn't. Ohm's Law and Maxwell's equations haven't changed since our great-great-grandparents were in school. Doesn't this get boring? Doesn't this get drab? But Smith is only 52... he's got a full decade until "early" Social Security.
So, we yearn for a change, even if it's jolting and jarring and potentially a downgrade. Heck, it happened to me... no more Groundhog Day, no more quotidian repetition, waking to fresh snow on a crisp brisk morning... and then what? Sometimes it's a tortuous and convoluted journey, back to where we started, back to the original stall, that smelled bad and confined us and blocked the fresh air. Sometimes, we just found ourselves outside of the fence, nominally free, but wandering.
Statistics: Posted by unwitting_gulag — Wed Sep 11, 2024 10:44 pm — Replies 6 — Views 1083
