dmccarty
Super Star Member
There is some great advise on this thread you just need to figure out what applies best for you.
I will take a slightly different tack. Does your attitude/viewpoint need to be adjusted? :confused3::laughing: Don't take that question as an insult but as a sincere question. And by attitude I don't mean you are being a jerk or anything. I will get back to the question in a moment.
During the recession back in the 80s, I was in school getting a degree that was much in demand, but even so, nobody was hiring, so I spent seven years getting a four year degree. I spent three years working as an intern at various places to gain job experience, earn money, and buy time for the economy to improve. When I graduated, I had three years of very good work experience that had taught me a great deal about The Real World in my career field...
I did not want to work in my career field! :shocked:
Except, I really had no choice, I did, and do like what I do, but the field has lots of unpaid OT and can be high stress. At one point, I had signed the dotted line and I was going off to OCC for a summer of fun, but Congress cut the budget and I was let go. So here I am, doing what I did not really want to be doing.
:laughing::laughing::laughing: Along the way, I have made a secondary, parallel career that counter balances the career that pays the bills.
During my intern days, I had a job I really hated and when walking into the building in the morning, I could feel my heart rate and blood pressure rise. After graduating, I was working on a very stressful project and at the end of some meetings, I would check my blood pressure and my BP would be in the unhealthy range. This is NOT good. Oddly, my second career was running at that point and it taught me a very important lesson about my first career. One day, I was out in the Everglades, on an air boat a few miles north Alligator Alley and few miles east of the old Miami canal. Backup was a good 30-60 minutes away, at best, south and west of Alligator Alley. Two of us, armed only with 9 Might Make it pistols and we were dealing with four men on two tracks. Each of them had a 12 gauge shotgun and a 9 Might Make it pistols. For some strange a...sed reason this was not stressful to me. :shocked: Go figure. :laughing::laughing::laughing: Yet, at my other job, dealing with deadlines and meetings, was causing me much stress, stress that if it continued, would kill me. Nobody, but ME, was putting that stress on ME. How come I could go out in the middle of a swamp, deal with people armed to the teeth, with no help around, yet have no stress? THAT made no sense and it taught me an important lesson. I needed to make an attitude adjustment about how I was approaching things at work...
After many years in my career, I look back at that stressful intern job, as well as other stressful positions I have had, and I think MUCH of the stress was my own doing. Part of this realization is from experience and thinking about events but a slightly different viewpoint/attitude on my part would have caused me much less stress.
The company I work for has laid off over 150,000 US employees even though the company is making money. Those 150,000 jobs have been send overseas AND another 100,000 people hired overseas. Best I can tell, only about 30% of the US workforce remains and we are slowly being fired each year. I had hoped the slaughter would end but the executives seemed determined to rid themselves of highly paid and highly SKILLED employees no matter the cost. To say this is a wee bit stressful is an understatement. I have watch dozens of people, good, skilled, hard working coworkers, get fired to squeeze a few percentage points of profit margin. I have also watched other people just rip themselves up emotionally under the pressure. This has affected their physical health, mental health, and relationship at home and at work. They simply could not adjust their attitude to deal with the work realities and the stress just tore them up.
This is not to say I am stress free. I am not. This week has been "interesting" and I have not been getting much sleep as a result, but I am also not wigged out with stress either. This week was not unexpected and was a decision point that kicked off a plan or two. Unfortunately for me, I don't see that I can change careers. I have no real idea of what I would like to do, other than what I do. :confused3:
Identify what you like, love and HATE about your job. Would a change of agency help or does being a LEO just not interest you anymore? Could a change in attitude/viewpoint help? Think about what really bugs you about your job....
The problem with construction and trade jobs is that they are very cyclic with the economy. You certainly do not want to be a painter, dry waller, or framer. The reality is that these are skilled jobs, yet people hand a paintbrush, spatula, or hammer to an illegal for lower pay, and off they go. The trades that require a license minimizes the illegal gambit. It seems like plumbers and HVAC guys will always have some work even in a recession. On the other hand, crawling in a crawl space or working in a hot attic is not my idea of fun, especially as one gets older. Wearing a vest, a duty belt and a polyester sweat suit, aka uniform, can be a bit uncomfortable but at least a patrol car has a seat and AC. But which is good or bad depends on your likes and dislikes.
Whatever you do, do not jump from the old job until you have a new job. Looking for work while unemployed would REALLY be stressful.
Good Luck,
Dan
I will take a slightly different tack. Does your attitude/viewpoint need to be adjusted? :confused3::laughing: Don't take that question as an insult but as a sincere question. And by attitude I don't mean you are being a jerk or anything. I will get back to the question in a moment.
During the recession back in the 80s, I was in school getting a degree that was much in demand, but even so, nobody was hiring, so I spent seven years getting a four year degree. I spent three years working as an intern at various places to gain job experience, earn money, and buy time for the economy to improve. When I graduated, I had three years of very good work experience that had taught me a great deal about The Real World in my career field...
I did not want to work in my career field! :shocked:
Except, I really had no choice, I did, and do like what I do, but the field has lots of unpaid OT and can be high stress. At one point, I had signed the dotted line and I was going off to OCC for a summer of fun, but Congress cut the budget and I was let go. So here I am, doing what I did not really want to be doing.
:laughing::laughing::laughing: Along the way, I have made a secondary, parallel career that counter balances the career that pays the bills.During my intern days, I had a job I really hated and when walking into the building in the morning, I could feel my heart rate and blood pressure rise. After graduating, I was working on a very stressful project and at the end of some meetings, I would check my blood pressure and my BP would be in the unhealthy range. This is NOT good. Oddly, my second career was running at that point and it taught me a very important lesson about my first career. One day, I was out in the Everglades, on an air boat a few miles north Alligator Alley and few miles east of the old Miami canal. Backup was a good 30-60 minutes away, at best, south and west of Alligator Alley. Two of us, armed only with 9 Might Make it pistols and we were dealing with four men on two tracks. Each of them had a 12 gauge shotgun and a 9 Might Make it pistols. For some strange a...sed reason this was not stressful to me. :shocked:
Go figure. :laughing::laughing::laughing: Yet, at my other job, dealing with deadlines and meetings, was causing me much stress, stress that if it continued, would kill me. Nobody, but ME, was putting that stress on ME. How come I could go out in the middle of a swamp, deal with people armed to the teeth, with no help around, yet have no stress? THAT made no sense and it taught me an important lesson. I needed to make an attitude adjustment about how I was approaching things at work... After many years in my career, I look back at that stressful intern job, as well as other stressful positions I have had, and I think MUCH of the stress was my own doing. Part of this realization is from experience and thinking about events but a slightly different viewpoint/attitude on my part would have caused me much less stress.
The company I work for has laid off over 150,000 US employees even though the company is making money. Those 150,000 jobs have been send overseas AND another 100,000 people hired overseas. Best I can tell, only about 30% of the US workforce remains and we are slowly being fired each year. I had hoped the slaughter would end but the executives seemed determined to rid themselves of highly paid and highly SKILLED employees no matter the cost. To say this is a wee bit stressful is an understatement. I have watch dozens of people, good, skilled, hard working coworkers, get fired to squeeze a few percentage points of profit margin. I have also watched other people just rip themselves up emotionally under the pressure. This has affected their physical health, mental health, and relationship at home and at work. They simply could not adjust their attitude to deal with the work realities and the stress just tore them up.
This is not to say I am stress free. I am not. This week has been "interesting" and I have not been getting much sleep as a result, but I am also not wigged out with stress either. This week was not unexpected and was a decision point that kicked off a plan or two. Unfortunately for me, I don't see that I can change careers. I have no real idea of what I would like to do, other than what I do. :confused3:
Identify what you like, love and HATE about your job. Would a change of agency help or does being a LEO just not interest you anymore? Could a change in attitude/viewpoint help? Think about what really bugs you about your job....
The problem with construction and trade jobs is that they are very cyclic with the economy. You certainly do not want to be a painter, dry waller, or framer. The reality is that these are skilled jobs, yet people hand a paintbrush, spatula, or hammer to an illegal for lower pay, and off they go. The trades that require a license minimizes the illegal gambit. It seems like plumbers and HVAC guys will always have some work even in a recession. On the other hand, crawling in a crawl space or working in a hot attic is not my idea of fun, especially as one gets older. Wearing a vest, a duty belt and a polyester sweat suit, aka uniform, can be a bit uncomfortable but at least a patrol car has a seat and AC. But which is good or bad depends on your likes and dislikes.
Whatever you do, do not jump from the old job until you have a new job. Looking for work while unemployed would REALLY be stressful.
Good Luck,
Dan
