My early career planning

Thanks Chris for tagging me.

When you were a kid what did you want to be when you grew up?

The first time I can ever remember thinking about work was when my Father asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up. Naturally, as a five year old, I was very impressed with being a JCB driver. Seemed the coolest job in the world to me.

Other than that, I really didn’t give careers much thought. As my Dad had a building business, it was kind of assumed that I would go into that.

If things had turned out different, what might your career have been?

I was enrolled in draftsman school at sixteen. Unfortunately, I was an awful draftsman. And I don’t even mean mediocre, I was truly awful. It used to take me three times as long as everybody else to create a drawing that looked like a five year old had drawn it. The really annoying thing is that I was really trying hard. Anyway, after a month into the three year course I knew I was a hopeless draftsman. Things wouldn’t have been too bad if I’d been good at surveying, but I wasn’t great at that either.

Anyway, I was saved from a life of dreadful draughtsmanship by my Father retiring from the building industry. Phew! That was a lucky escape. You really didn’t want to be in the building industry in the early 1990s recession. A number of my fellow students were made redundant and have never returned to the building industry.

One thing I did used to be good at was playing field hockey. My nano claim to fame is that I had an England trial at the same time as a future Great Britain Olympic Gold medal winner. But he was a miles better player than I was. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that he was one of the finest players on the planet at the time. So, I guess, had hockey been a professional sport, I might have eked out a living at one of the less fashionable teams. But it wasn’t, and so far as I am aware, it still isn’t a professional sport to any great extent.

It is odd how things turn out. I enjoy what I do, my work days fly by and I like the people I work with. You can’t beat that, especially the last one.