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Out of context: Reply #76120
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- Horp3
I have no desire to be trying to one-up on OBBTKN's post below (congrats OBBTKN) because we can't help our age and age related stats...
But reading his post reminded that this is my 40th year working in the industry.
My career started at 15, back in 1985, when I droppped out of school and went on a government training scheme.
I was taught draughting and got placed in the drawing room of a patent office called Forrester Ketley in Birmingham. I was taught to create the technical drawings for patent applications to VERY specific standards, using Rotring pens on Gateway trace.
I was terrible at it. Too messy, my lines were wobbly and shakey, and it would take me days to do one when the other two people in there could do four or five patents a day.
I'd make mistakes, scratch them out with a round ended scalpel blade and scratch a hle through the trace. The patent customers would complain about the appalling patent drawings, which were part of why they paid thousands to apply forn a patent. Like buying a Porsche and being handed a dog-chewed Toyota key.
I was eventually reassigned to a marketing company called Howle Chapman Raymer where I was treated badly but used all of their materials to create a portfolio that got me into art college about four years later.
At art college I started freelancing as a graphic designer for fashion designer Paul Smith.
Cue circa 12 years as a graphic designer, and then a wildly deviating career path through a bunch of roles.
Now, I feel like I've reached the end of my career. The job I have now is highly likely to be my last in the industry. At 55 I doubt I'd be hired anywhere else and I wouldn't want to be. I'm just doing this until for one reason or another it stops, and I wont be sad about that when it does.
Kind of done with it all really. It's not been a bad run though. I did some fun things along the way.
- The regular job market will no doubt snob us after a certain age, but I've always looked up to the 70+ for skills and wisdom vs the hot new thing.spl33nidoru
- I believe those of us who still want to be active past retirement time can be, among the right crowd and with the right skills.spl33nidoru
- People view our activity with romanticism, but the truth is that many times, too many times, it can be brutal!OBBTKN