my last decade has gone as follows:
1. quit a safe, comfortable, well paying project manager job doing high profile and big $ jobs, because i got sick of dressing up like a congressional intern every day and engaging in "project management" (read: mutual arse-kissing and glad handing from a hermetically sealed office 10 floors off the ground).
2. spent a year farting around and being a part time I-man for my first boss.?ÿ smoking joints in the truck on the way out to the job, yukking it up all day, doing easy breezy work, making pennies on the dollar. (which was fine for a short while.)?ÿ this made me enjoy surveying again.
3. partnered up with some old coworkers (enginners) from line item #1 above.?ÿ spent 3 years establishing a survey department and it blew up so fast that i was quickly right back to what made me hate surveying: being a babysitter/HR generalist/boss/office prisoner.?ÿ got in a pretty big row with two partners at the end of year 3 and bailed.
4. took a job at a title company, setting up a new model for them- having all their survey exam be done by... a surveyor.?ÿ GREAT gig- got to get a really good look at the ambient state of land title surveying around here and also was basically sitting on THE mountain of that which TS references: deeds, history, all the documents you could ever want to get your hands on.?ÿ but... i found out i was wrong and that i couldn't still- even at an advancing age- take being confined inside all day. (side note:?ÿ title companies practically print $.?ÿ they have NO problem paying people who are worth it.?ÿ also, first american looks to be, over the past 5-6 years, expanding the number of survey professionals they're hiring in various capacities- many of them are remote jobs.?ÿ i was made available to speak to muckety-mucks at various national underwriters as they saw how effective the model was becoming that we'd set up.)?ÿ
5. so i bit the bullet, took out a big low interest loan on some gear, bought an antenna and a robot, and set my laptop on the dinner table here at the house and sent out a single round of emails to old clients and coworkers.?ÿ been going like a banshee for the past 2.5 years.?ÿ actively resisting offers to be absorbed, merge, bought, and urges to expand.?ÿ it's hectic still, and i'm not anywhere near regimented enough to keep wearing all these hats (office manager, accountant, secretary, on top of being the head field dude and drafter), but this is the best it's been since the early, early days of surveying for me.
i'm burned out right now, and need a vacation worse than i have in a long time, and don't see the opportunity anywhere in sight, but that's ok.?ÿ older i get the easier it is to appreciate the scale of things.?ÿ in other words, this too shall pass.?ÿ and perhaps more importantly- it's not the surveying that has me threadbare.
i don't know what i'm trying to say.?ÿ i guess it's this:?ÿ yes, there are options.?ÿ probably more than you immediately can conjure.?ÿ and a good number of them may well serve to bring you back to what made you want to keep doing this in the first place.
I love your description.
Over the years I too bounced around like a slow-motion pinball across the spectrum of land surveying opportunities.?ÿ I've pretty much wound up in a comfortable, palatable and profitable place for the last 25 years.?ÿ
Did I actually plan on getting here??ÿ Absolutely not, but I'm glad I'm here just the same.?ÿ To quote the Dead, "What a long strange trip it's been".?ÿ 😉
Do like Al Bundy and sell shoes? ?????ÿ
