Vocation Search
Mid 2018 - August 2019
Childhood
My childhood occurred in the 1970s and early 80s before the days where electronic gadgets ruled a persons free time. Researching this article took me to forgotten memories of playing hand held games with flippers, Pac-Man on a watch and later mini games like Astro wars. The days when Casio watches were king.
Brought up in a small village in the highlands of Scotland gave me the freedom to roam and explore, the local hills and woodlands were a massive playground. With nature all around I developed an interest in the local widlife - rabbits everywhere, stoat living under the rocks in the front garden, “Fred” the buzzard often sitting in the same tree on the way to the local town. Further afield the bigger hills and Munros were still easily accessible but it wasn't until my thirties that I got a passion for fell running and exploring the mountains of the UK.
Parental Influences
My dad had a great job surveying electrical installations all over the highlands. His days were spent touring around, sometimes staying away on the western isles. Occasionally he would take me out with him to some wild and remote place. That sounded like the perfect job to me but despite getting a similar engineering education and summer jobs at hydro stations it was not to be.
Career
Somehow I ended up in the world of software despite always claiming I never wanted to do a desk based computing job but the way the world was going it was perhaps an inevitable fate that the electrical/electronics I was training in would lead me to working on computers. That would be fine in smaller doses but not all day every day.
Thirty years later with my head numbed from a career of software watching endless bits and bytes going round their merry little electrical computer circuit lines and my bum numbed from sitting in an office chair I decided to make a change.
I needed a vocation that I enjoy or to find what the Japanese call ikigai.
Vocation
It was a bit of a struggle sifting through a lifetime of likes and dislikes while keeping an open mind to all possibilities. Eventually, after a few months of searching, it came to the underlying fact that I like to be creative, to produce things, I always enjoyed art and doodling, later in life I made furniture and I am currently sitting on a chair bodged from ash logs made on a Green Wood Days course.
The beginning
About five years ago I purchased a laser cutter with the intention of using it to create a small business. Five years later it had gathered much dust and little use other than small gifts for family and friends.
After a bit of a clean-up, and many many many hours of drawing and cutting and learning and tweaking and drawing and an embarrasing amount of wasted plywood it eventually came to something a little bit niche with the creation of "Puddin" the once straggly thin stray cat found living in our hedge during a snowy Christmas (now adopted and with a little Christmas pudding belly).
So that is the current situation and the reason for the existence of this blog, website and Shop.
Who knows where this path will take me but it's all about enjoying the journey not the destination.
Thank you for reading and good luck in finding your own Ikigai.
Richard