your plans for the future.

happy friday.

i just started a new job which actually offers a broad variety of career paths, something which my old job most definitely did not. it’s made me think a bit about progressing, about which way i’d like to go in the future - thinking that’s kinda foreign to me. so i’d like some inspiration. i’d love to hear about where you are now, where you wanna be in 5/10/15/20 years, how you intend to get there. doesn’t have to be all job related - you can throw in broader life stuff too. it’s all good.

Wow that’s interesting timing.

I’m about to find out whether I’m getting a better (I hope) job than the one I have now, which bores me to tears.

If I don’t succeed I’m gonna go part time while I decide what to do about it.

I have been asking myself this question a hell of a lot lately… I just don’t have any answers. I know I need a change, but don’t know what.

I’ve got my two step plan:

Build lots of awesome frames

Die

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans. - John Lennon
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this is super hard to figure out…i’m now 30 and thinking about things similarly.

i got a couple of clear paths i could go down professionally in architecture, neither of which interest me specifically.

i’m looking for work now to try and position myself somewhere i at least enjoy being for the next couple of years then moving on from boston hopefully to warmer pastures.

from there i wish i knew. i feel like the skills of architecture can be better used elsewhere rather than in making buildings…maybe in 20 years i’ll be an elected person of some sort. i’d need a haircut but.

Has nobody not told you, Brendan, that you’ve got this kind of gleeful preoccupation with the future? I wouldn’t even mind, but you don’t even have a fuckin’ future, I don’t have a future. Nobody has a future. The party’s over. Take a look around you man, it’s all breaking up.

^ Points for anyone who can name the movie…without using Google.

This.

I had a very long, grim and pessimistic reply, and then I went to post it, and it failed for some reason. Clearly the universe didn’t want anyone to see it.

I’m 29 right now, by the time I’ve 40 I’d like a small farm with a garage. 20 acres would be great, I’d settle for 5 though.
I figure the path I’m on at the moment with work will mean that I’ll be able to afford it and the older I get the more I hate the city.

The whole work/life balance message my work sprouts should mean I can work a couple days a week from home, the rest of the time I’ll just ride a motorcycle to work.

quit my job, go snowboarding, drive a truck around.

wait.

sometimes I feel like I’m coasting, working 3 days a week instead of 5+ and chasing promotions / bigger-better. But I’m still putting money in the bank and my mental health is great, so maybe it’s not so bad.

If that means I can’t afford the BMW & the big mortgage / makes me a bandit. so be it.

working part time for longer vs “early” retirement. tough call. can I do both?

I don’t think thats a problem Blakey, if you aren’t chasing the big ticket items then why the need to earn a wage that requires that? Like you said, your mental health is great - if you are happy, why change what you are doing.

I tried to change career paths so that I’d have more job opportunities outside the city. Then that got shut down because I couldn’t find work, went back to the old career and then 12 months later a job in the country kinda fell into my lap.

5/10 years from now, hopefully I’ll still be here doing the same shit, riding bikes, making beers, and spending plenty of time with my kids instead of spending that time commuting.

Move abroad. being in the architecture game means I either settle into a larger firm, or continue slogging it out at a small office, with almost no possible future progression - most probably until I become registered and start my own, which is even more of a battle.

As such I plan to move to Berlin, work in an art gallery, ride fixies and get munted every night on cheap intoxicants until I am too old to do so.

To clarify…I have what is commonly called A Good Job. It pays (relatively) well and is interesting but I have been doing it for 7 or so years, and been at the place (The ABC) for nearly 12 years, so I am beginning to feel like I need a change. I have been applying for & putting feelers out for other jobs within the ABC (it really is a great place to work) but because of the hours I do, none of the jobs I would like to do pay enough (ie no penalties).

I need the extra money the penalties give , as my partner is studying and only works 3hr a week, we have 3 children & a $20k loan to pay off. So I feel like I should stay at my well paying, but increasingly frustrating job at least until my partner finishes uni (3years) and can work full time again.

My immediate plans for the future are to sell my mtb & fixie to buy a duallie mtb.
My medium term plan is to figure where to move to in a 1.5 years when we will need a 3 bedroom home, can’t really afford sydney anymore.
My long term plan is …who knows.

I don’t know many people who actually have a “life plan”…the small number I do know (and that stick to their plans religiously) are dreadful bores and seem to suffer a lot of angst about it.

OK so about 15 years ago I got to choose…lucrative work in a conventional profession, I was good at it and was getting noticed but I was pretty sure would have sucked the life out of me and made me a virtual stranger to Mrs C (and the as-yet unborn kids I wanted) or modestly-paid work with heaps of autonomy and a chance to spend at least some of my working week doing stuff that gave me a buzz. I chose the latter. I didn’t really have a plan, it was more about shutting my eyes and picturing how I would be spending my days then, and in the 5-10 years after. Seems a no-brainer looking back but at the time the choice didn’t come easily.

Sometimes I wonder about the road not taken. Sometimes the $$ are tight and we don’t have a lot of fancy shit or grand holidays, sometimes I wonder how it would have been for Mrs C if she hadn’t had to work as much/as hard (or at all) for those years… Early last year I was offered a similar choice in my institution but after a few sleepless nights I declined the “promotion” for the same reasons, with Mrs C’s full support. I’m a bit on the nose politically at work because I said no but IME these things pass (the dude who took that job has since bailed on it, it turned out for him pretty much as I expected). Again, not so much about a plan but about how I spend my days now and in the foreseeable future and who I spend them with. I’ve still got an eye on career, probably more so than before but within the bounds of what I’m prepared to do for it.

Not sure where I was going with that but having gone to the trouble of typing it…

1 year - Team/Project Manager
5 years - Department Manager
10 years - Member of the Exec team
15 years - MD/CEO of the company
20 years - Buy a McDonald’s store

Some where in between I aspire to get married, have children and get rad.

CBR - just down the road. Plenty of riding so close on your doorstep. See you in 1.5 years!

Actually I am coming down in Mid April to do some MTBing (and attend a wedding) - was gonna get in touch with you a bit closer to the date to hit stromlo or majura or sparrow.