50 years of working

Posted by on October 22nd, 2019  •  0 Comments

Sue is retiring next year and it got me thinking about how long I want to work. I really like my job. Doing and or teaching web design has been my passion for almost 20 years. And that followed a 32 year career as a printer, starting in 1968 when I quit my paperboy delivery job to work after school at the Sherwood Press.

Respect

I got a lot of respect as a printing press operator. Printing back then was like nursing is now. You could work anywhere. I was never unemployed in 28 years of full time printing. I got fired or laid off a couple times, but easily found new jobs in a week or two. I worked at 9 different printshops, each one had either better hours, a better machine, or higher wages. We used to say that the only job security in printing was the skills in our hands. Similar to a gifted auto mechanic now, there was always work.

With all that being said, I still plan to keep teaching for a while. This job is so perfect! I love the passion my students have for learning web design. Even after all this time I still enjoy working on my website, and sharing that enthusiasm with my students is fun. I work every other quarter, and then have 3 months off. How cool is that? I typically play during my time off, but working part time somewhere is an option also.

I did seriously look for work recently during a recent quarter off, even had a couple of great interviews. But, sad to say, age discrimination is  a real thing. That won’t keep me from trying to find work though. As one of my friends said: “They don’t know what they’re missing!”

I’ve been daydreaming on the weekends about maybe getting a bigger car that makes road tripping less painful. I can road trip just fine in my little 2004 Tacoma pickup.  I love that old truck! With a canopy on the back it’s a hotel on wheels. But when Sue is with me, I think it’s reasonable to ask for a little more comfort. We are in our mid sixties after all.

I wanted to explore possible interior van builds on a used van we might get somewhere in the future. I’ve never done 3D modeling before so I watched a tutorial on www.lynda.com about SketchUp. It’s super cool software, and the online version is free. Here are some screen shots of what I built. It can also do animated transitions and make an mp4 video. I built it all from scratch based on the dimensions of a high roof 148 inch wheel base Ford Transit. The figure, bags, faucett, bikes and chairs were free components I downloaded.

 

 

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