After 19 years as an Engineering employee, Yours Truly is one of the many soon-to-be victims of corporate downsizing, due to the shrinking economy this year. 250 of us will be released to the economic wild in the near future; many will go to another branch of the company, and many will find employment elsewhere, albeit with difficulty in this economic climate. I intend to take a different path.
Most of the projects that I have done as an engineer there started as a joyfully creative process, but then became dry and rote once it was fully integrated into our production. I did always get a kick out of tweaking the code in a CNC machine to the point that the output is a high-quality work of art. Or getting a molder adjusted to the point that the cut in the wood is flawless. But once done, and the product is being cranked out, the excitement goes out of the process.
I guess I’m an artist by nature, and never did truly fit in to the corporate culture – despite the fact that I closely followed that culture for all of those years. I made a good living there, but it is time to move on. I feel that I won’t pursue work in the same field at any company.
I’ve decided to become a full-time student in the near and foreseeable future. I will be studying the graphic arts, with emphasis on Web design. I may belatedly get my Photography shingle, so that I can become an instructor in that field.
I have to thank my soon-to-be ex-employer for the generous severance pay that will enable me to pursue my dream. I have no hard feelings toward them, and I have truly enjoyed working with some very fine people for the last two decades. It is a chapter in my life that helped make me who I am today, and I think that I’m a better person for it.
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