Entertainment For Lively Minds
Mid life crisis alert
Posted by DougieJ on 30 January 2010 - 2:41am.
I posted a previous 'postcard from the hedge' last July about my vague angst
My latest thought is to train to become an HGV driver. This, I have to admit, is largely due to the following influences:
Do you,
A. indulge my mid-life crisis (I'm pushing 43)
B. tell me to stick to my sensible 9-5 office job.
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Just read your original post
and you sound like you've had a very similar "career path" to me!
Currently I want to be a telephone engineer based solely on THIS:
It all depends on what you want out of life
I'm 47 and I seem to be working harder than ever at a bunch of jobs that had nothing to do with what I thought I wanted to do with my life.
Music has always influenced every choice I have ever made and I find that music will always have that effect on me.This one made me buy my first home.
The answer is
Stick to the job, and act on your real dreams at the same time, so that you aren't where you are now in 5 years.You have step it up a few notches to make changes.
Can I point you
at a blog I posted at the turn of the year, that struck a chord with those who read it:
http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/why-its-never-too-late#comments
The important thing to know
about being an HGV driver is that it involves very early starts (4am is fairly common), long working days, and frequent overnight sleeps in your cab. Given the increasing creakiness of the human body once you're well into your 40s, and the consequent growing desire for comfort, you'd find it, er, interesting, physically speaking, after years of office hours and office (relative) comfort.
Point taken.
but I have a very sedentary lifestyle as it is - drive to work, then the only walking I do tends to be to and from the printer. I fully realise it's a 'problem' many people would love to have - steady job, not bad pay for the work etc, but I look at people who are 20 years older than me and know that I could very easily turn into them. It's a comfort zone, sensible though it is.
Dougie
Don't do it. My brother got stuck in haulage for years and it nearly killed him. He fell asleep at the wheel and it was only this near-miss that finally convinced him that enough was enough, and he went to the Far East and turned his life around.
There is ZERO romance in a life on the road; you will f**k your back, shoulders and joints, you will get fat, and the death of all that is presumably fragile, thoughtful and no-doubt wonderful about you will merely be accelerated.
Look at lorry drivers who are just FIVE years older than you, let alone twenty, tell them what you're thinking doing, and think again.
Interesting.
Thanks for the advice.
It's just an idea at this stage. I guess what I crave, after years of inconsequential retail and admin jobs, is a 'proper' job, which involves no ambiguity about its career structure, i.e. you can either do the job or you can't.
These gave me food for thought:
Have you spent any time
on the road yet, Dougie?
I don't know if you're aware of this forum:
http://forum.truckersworld.co.uk/
But you might find someone out there who can maybe take you along for the ride (insurance permitting).
Apart from my brother, my only brushes with truckers have come when I've been hitch-hiking, and most of them seem like nice blokes apart from the odd one or two that were trying to get into my drawers (and even they weren't that bad once they realised that 18st tattoo-covered Eddie Yates lookalikes weren't my thing).
I can see the romance
but I'd worry that 'The Road' could become as familiar to you as The office is now. The Little Feat track does make it all tempting though..
Yes but
...he's been to Tucson, Tucumcari, Tehachapi and Tonopah, not to mention driving every kinda rig that's ever been made. Sadly Dougie will probably be stuck on the M1 trying to get to Leeds in some regulated lorry with a name. No chance of weed, whites and wine, and thanks to the "progress" of satnav every backroad is also clogged with traffic. Lowell is probably turning in his grave.
I upped you there Twang...
...purely because I had no idea those where the lyrics!
Thank you!
Not only that,
but after a decade jammed into the cab of a rig stuck in gridlock on the M40 half way to Northampton, he'll realise with horror one lazy evening when he isn't slogging from A to B that he is that fat man in the bathtub.
But what's your point, caller?
;-)
Trucking songs
There are some great trucking songs.
Nick Lowe's pal:
And a few classics by a specialist.
Notes from Underground
I'm 51 and was made redundant from a job I'd loved doing at different places for 30 years. Now I've been a dole wallah since last August and no-one wants to know. My brother is also on the dole; he was an airline pilot for Globespan and looks unlikely ever to get another as he's 48. He was working for Midland Bank and hating it until a colleague asked if anyone wanted a free flying lesson that his missus had bought for his birthday. With his redundancy money (he 'failed' a second interview at the Bank after working 15 years for them) he funded his flying career. Despite what's happened to him, I would go for it Dougie; it's cold out here and it's not getting better despite what our glorious leaders are telling us. Follow your instincts boy!
This is surely what it's really like.....
And probably not like this