| > I feel like I've lost that passion I had for technology. I don't feel like working in the industry anymore. I had that about a decade into my career, and left tech. Gave everything up and joined a community, living 4 years with no personal possessions. Went homeless for a stint. Spent a while living in a room empty but for a mattress on the floor, in a house of drugs and ex-cons. Helped others on the streets through cold turkey. Tried my hand farming (fruit, veg, chickens, pigs etc). Did a stint pricing up new kitchens. Worked a trade sales counter at a builder's merchant. Ran fleets of delivery vehicles. Did door-to-door sales. Loaded trucks. Drove a forklift in warehouses. Ran an overnight support service for an ISP in the days of CDs with AOL and Demon Internet software on them. Ran a nightshift call-centre for a startup telecoms company. Worked in a credit collections department. Eventually I got back to where I started - in tech and with a fresh appreciation for it. It seems that everywhere I went and everything I did kept steering me back to my original passion. Unavoidably so. Decades later I'm still here and am daily grateful that I do work I can (mostly) enjoy. As alluded to elsewhere in these threads, sometimes you just need a break from it all. Take the time to step away, then come back with a renewed perspective. |