I hired a fishing guide once and he was very good at what he did. I quizzed him about how it came about and he said that he "wanted to follow his passion." He then said he would never do it again because it turned his passion into a pain in the azz and nothing more than a job....he got to the point where he hated going fishing each day.
A good friend of mine owned an archery shop and said the same thing. When he started out, he could shoot nonstop 7 days a week. After 25 years he could barely stand to look at the damn bows he worked on. I asked him what he would do if he could start over again, he said he would have went into the jewelry business and dealt with the pain in the asses, where at least the profit margin was 400% and not 4% like the hunting industry.
Another one of my contacts retired from an engineering job in Wisconsin, moved to Brunswick, GA and became a fishing guide. He quit that and went back to work in a fish factory because he got tired of baby sitting a bunch of asssshole drunks.
The perfect job is one that allows some decent money, without sacrificing too much personal time to get it. Any suggestions?
Coming out of high school my passion was to do something that would keep me close to hunting and fishing, and being a Game Warden seemed like a natural fit. At the time, Game Wardens were starting about about 25K per year in Ohio. Even to a niave 18 year old kid, the thought of working so hard, being on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week and not seeing a real clear chance of that really improving much wasn't very appealing. It's great to chase a passion, but sometimes unless you plan on driving a Yugo for 30 years, and living on raman noodles, it's not a realistic career path.
Fast forward a few years and I dabbled with fishing professionally. The first thing I learned, was even with a good run, it's an incredibly tough way to make a living. The second thing I learned, is living week to week, and needing to be on the stage every Sunday, just to have enough gas to drive home is no way to live. It took me two years to figure tht out. Some of the guys I fished with 25 years ago still toil in the journeyman ranks. They fill out the tournaments on Saturday, and then on Monday try to figure out how to pay the next entry fee. It's a tough way to make a buck.
It took a few years, but I learned that working with my hands and my brain was what was going to feed me. I've been in the optical industy for close to 35 years now. My bills get paid, there's a roof over my head, and food in the fridge.
Folks don't want to get their hands dirty today, and the skilled labor trades go crying for help. A friend owns a machine shop and has basically given up on finding qualified help. He makes his own machinists from the floor up. Trade schools and tech schools just can't turn out enough qualified people to supply the trades. What a shame.
