Interests and Careers

Now that I have reached what most people would consider "retirement age," I can safely look back across my life and state that I never really had a career.

Of course, that's not to say that I haven't worked. I've had all sorts of jobs doing all sorts of different things, I just haven't followed a particular path with any kind of plan towards developing expertise in a particular field.

A waste of a good University education? If you were to have asked my parents — back when they were still alive — they would definitely have said "yes", even if they weren't who paid for that education. But they were older and came from a generation where practicality was far more important than whether you were pursuing your interests.

I suppose I should have known there would be trouble ahead already when I was at University and took lots of courses that had little to do with my declared business and finance major. I just wanted to learn things!

But that is not exactly how the system is set up to work.

Well it definitely is possible to turn an interest into a career, my particular interests were generally too esoteric to be translated into mass market commercial success.

As a general rule, I ended up spending much of my life "just about scraping by," because I was busy pursuing some direction I happened to be interested in. While it definitely kept my mind occupied and happy, it didn't do much for my bank account... and in this world of "maximizing" everything, I raised more than a few eyebrows by my choices.

But I never thought of them as bad choices.

In the end, I contemplate the question of just how we quantify "wealth. " Even when I was young and hopeful and ambitious, I rarely viewed success purely through the size of a bank balance. What good is having millions if you're depressed about your life?

I suppose it could argued that I was not exactly responsible in my choices. After all, I'm nearing retirement age, but will most likely never be able to retire. On the upside, because I focused on pursuing my interests im not stuck with some soulless job I wouldn't want to continue doing!

Thanks for stopping by and have a great remainder of your week!

How about YOU? Are you pursuing a career? Or are you pursuing you interests, taking whatever jobs present themselves? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

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Created at 2026.08.12 01:34PDT
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