How do you feel about you job/career?

I'm so called retired (no longer able to run a business but not yet stupid).

I liked all three of my careers, which were sort of interwoven.

First I worked as a lab tech and was lucky to connect to a uni department that was at the forefront of stuff. I quit that at one point because I was frustrated that I wasn't learning hematology, my main med interest. Snort - I had a good time at the next lab but it was no advancement. Fine memories though.

Applied to the uni re a job in hematology and got shunted to my old boss, who told me a pal was now out of the armed forces and setting up a hematology immunology lab. I listened, and had another set of excellent years as his main tech.

Got interested in art after work.
Got an inquiry to help so and so to set up a lab. (That lab is now Quest, she chuckles).
Did that, but didn't want to be a manager (who, me?)

Quit five years later, studied landscape architecture. My world widened, hard to describe how much. I'm not all land archy, but still have wider vision than I did to start with.

got licensed in that. Years of school starting at forty. (Don't whine to me).

In the middle of all that I took batches of studio art courses. Learned some stuff. Am a painter.

This is a tough time, crazie, but when I got a long time wonderful job with a local landarch, he was something like my ninetieth call. We're still talking all this time later.

I think you are creative, cl and haven't explored that.

So how did you make the switch from careers? I feel as though I am stuck in a terrible rut right now and thinking about it only makes it that much worse!

Did you just take a leap of faith or did you have a connection? Did you go to school and work?

Thanks :-)

Well, I didn't have children, so it was easier to leap. Also my last lab place was the least interesting of my fifteen years in lab work, and I was madly tired of not being near any windows. I had some savings to pay for the courses - not all that much of savings, and worked full time and went to school at night. Little money left to toss around, but that has been something of a constant for various reasons.

I studied land arch for four years and "interned" in it another two, and then took a national board test and passed. I usually took two or three courses at a time at a university extension (these cost money and time), but others took one at a time. I think university extensions are great, and am all for evening classes. I got little sleep some of those years but had a whole new world open up to me, and a lot of new people I liked. I started that at forty. There are likely many fields where one doesn't have to knuckle down for four years - that just happened to be one that interested me. (Actually, I signed up for a drafting class, and others in that class were studying landscape architecture, which I'd not heard of before that. I was a goner when I found out design was fun.) I've not done any online courses but I wouldn't discount them, depending on the reputation of the individual courses.

But.. before I took land arch courses, I took drawing and painting classes. I would go to class tired and somewhat aggravated and leave invigorated. Who knew I would love to paint.. That can be a problem, to be wide awake and happy at 10:30 on a week night. I'd have to quiet myself down when I got home, given I had to get up early for work.

The thing was, I don't regret all those years in the laboratory first. I still am interested in science. It's just that my "plate" got fuller.

Crazie, whether you take course or not, consider doing a bunch of reading about things you might be interested in.

When I was a kid, I liked going around with my parents "house hunting". Decades later I figured out that I am interested in architecture. I had never really noticed that I was.

I'm glad I have a job. The company is a 1000 times better then my last workplace. Some of the workers were catty. The management was insufferable. The pay now is better then my last job and I worked there for 7 and a half years. Etc....

But I still need to find a weekend job in order to keep afloat and ahead of my bills. As a famous red headed British philosopher once sang, "Money's too tight to mention."

I read, a lot.. I am just scatter brained and have so many interests, it is hard to narrow it down. Photography, writing, music, etc.

As my grandmother would say... "And this too shall pass"

That's not all bad..