My Career

My Career

I do not know that anyone chooses a career in life. It seems that fate or certain outside forces influences the decisions you make in life. These forces change your life from one career to the next until you end up in your retirement years looking back on your life thinking of the “what ifs."

I guess I have to open the topic of my paper “My Career” with me in my teens because my life has turned direction several times since then. Originally I had my heart set on a football career. I was fairly good at it playing both offensive and defensive positions. Unfortunately the outside sources that changed my budding career involved a tractor on my Uncle’s farm one summer in my junior year. The tractor won and I lost some movement in my knee for about three years. Needless to say my career was over. A few years later I entered college and found a desire to become an oceanographer. I have always lived near the water and interested in the ocean, the life under it, and the secrets it holds. If I remember correctly the outside force that ended this career was my own failure in following some strict study habits. Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute informed me that they accepted only 3.0 grade point average and above. Another outside force at this time was the draft and the Viet Nam War. I ended up entering the Navy and was sure that I had found the career of my lifetime. I had finally found a career where I excelled. I was happy, enjoyed the professionalism, the freedom and authority that I possessed. This new career fit well with my character and what I wanted to do with my life. I trained people, helped them, watched them succeed and grow.

What more could I ask for, the military had a certain form of excitement not shared by any other profession in the world. The places I traveled if duplicated would take a lifetime of trying, the experience, the honor of serving my country, all with an adequate wage scale. The outside forces that ended this career path in the Navy would fill a volume. To keep this long story in perspective and within the confines of this assignment, it is easier to conclude that the Navy became a job and not an adventure. Three crashes, a divorce, and plethora of other smaller forces led to the decision to retire prematurely from the military and return to my home in Syracuse, New York where my family was.

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...od compensation package.

The Readers Digest version of my careers in only a few pages. The final chapter is not written yet and is still to come. Check for it in your grocery stores. I enjoy helping people, training them to realize their dreams and successes. However, there is a price for this knowledge. Paid to support my family in a life style that they feel is comfortable. I guess that as I have gotten older, my need for speed, excitement, and adventure as a driving force within my career has been replaced. My outside driving force is my family, my need to help them survive. My career rewards themselves spent on my family’s education, marriages, and for my own retirement with my spouse. Am I happy with my own life and with the career paths I have been fortunate to see and succeed with? Yes! Would I do anything differently? Yes! If I did, would I be blessed with the wife and children that I presently have? I do not know. I do know that my career has been my life, the people I have helped along the way. My payment has been small, with the survival of my family. This fact I would not change for anything. Fate has been a mystical force in my life, and I thank it.