I’m 31M at the other end of the academia machine working a white collar job after listening to my parents. Being a sheltered good boy I took the safe route, stayed in school got decent grades and got a “fancy” engineering job. I hate being behind a desk, it kills me every day. I’ve noticed when the chance to do field assignments pops up I come back feeling like a new man. My mannerisms are different, my confidence is effortless, there’s bass in my voice. Whereas in my day to day computer jockeying I’m mostly meek and quiet or unresponsive in meetings. I’m a first generation college graduate and have been at this for almost 5 years. I know I won’t do it forever but lately I’m trying to follow my own personal legend.
What inspirations or epiphany’s caused you to turn your life around? I don’t have kids or a mortgage, my student debt is almost paid off. I want to live a life like The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. I know life isn’t a movie but just felt like I missed out on so much living at home with parents while going to college. No body reaches out to me and when I reach out it hardly goes anywhere if at all, so I just stopped doing that. I’ve toyed with the ideas of starting a business, joining the national guard, traveling abroad indefinitely doing peace corps or something. I want a role where I can use my engineering acumen but also work with my hands and be present in my work. My dad is an auto body repair guy and he seems to love his work, learns a lot of practical stuff too which is cool. I don’t leave anything just write documents and read to escape.