How to Find or to Create a Career?

[Dio]

How did you get into your present career? What are the important factors in determining the appropriate career for an individual?

[Rusty Edge]

I went the "do what you love" route. Maybe not the wisest possible career, but then, I had some issues  with some of the things I tried afterwards... Like fantasizing about being in a car wreck on the commute so I'd have an excuse not to go to work that day. I would rather be beat up than involved in an auto accident.

So, tired from working all of the time, poor and enjoying life VS. more money than I need and preferring hospitalization to the workday, and I used to really dread hospitals.

Oh well. All is well that ends well.

I'm not saying do what you love so much as "don't get trapped in a job which you loathe."

[Unorthodox]

Lessee...

The Boss went to school, planning to be a PA (Physicians Assistant).  As she was going to school, working her way up, we had friend who had a baby born at 23 weeks that was so tiny she fit in the palm of my hand.  We spent most weekends with them in the NICU, and hEt decided she'd like to be a part of THAT world, specifically, dealing with the little babies that need help to live.  So, she switched to focusing on respiratory therapist.  Got a job in a rest home, then in home care before being able to get into the NICU. 

I couldn't be more different. 

Not knowing what I wanted to do out of High School, I got a job on an assembly line that paid enough for us to get married and keep hEt in school.  I approached the job as an I'll try anything, learn anything and everything perspective, and eventually learned most jobs in the place, becoming lead over the weekend shift of the shipping department before the outsourcing and cuts started happening. 

My former neighbor was a supervisor and let me know of the opening at Boeing, so I applied there, having grown to hate working at Honeywell (who had bought and ruined FRAM).  I actually didn't initially get the job at Boeing, as they were going through layoffs at the time, but the person that GOT the job decided it was so crappy he'd rather get laid off, so I got the call.  Started out just as a warehousing position.  I approached the Boeing job much like the one at FRAM.  Try anything, learn anything.  From tech orders to ordnance tech (because you WANT the crazy person handling the asplosives) to field service, I got very hands on with the system, and virtually every day was something new.  Guard duty this day, disarming system the next, blowing things up the next.  The constant change fit with my Gemini nature.  Then the contract ended.  I stuck on with a different program that shoved me back in a warehouse and I hated.   

When that program was ending, I got a call from TASC to go back to "my" system, which had been reactivated and awarded to TASC.  Someone had misplaced most of it, and frankly no one in the world knew it as well. 

Spent 3 years with TASC finding everything again, and even doing a bit of engineering and even made a patent or two.  The gubment shutdowns and refusals to pass a budget forced the cancellation of that program again, which cast me adrift for a year.  My experience is so pigeonholed on the one system, it doesn't apply to a very wide range. 

BAE won a contract for System V3.  It took them a year of hiring before getting to my area of most expertise.  My boss still says I had the most interesting interview he's ever seen.  They felt more like I was interviewing THEM, letting them know exactly how big of a mess they were in.  I don't have quite the freedom I had under System V2, still.  I do hear V2 is restarting yet again...

[Mart]

A lot to tell about it.
However, one thing, that recently became obvious to me, is: it is important to do what you like. And yet again:
Sooner or later things will become more difficult, problems in life (in general) will emerge. It is easier to deal with all this stuff when you go to work and do what you like, that even is relaxing for you, not a struggle to do all required job duties. Not to mention, if you do something you like, you learn much faster, and this is important to do career job efficiently, so you are not stuck on low level position.

If only life was that easy. Some say, that approximately every 7 years your personality somewhat changes. And that may include what you like. So, say, after 10 years of building your career on what you like, or liked in the beginning, you may come to a conclusion, it is not that anymore.

No easy solutions here.