Recently a member of our management team had made the decision to leave our company. As a co-founder he had eat, lived, breathed the company for 5+ years and was a bit burnt. In his parting speech to the company he said (paraphrased): "well it's been a lot of fun and a lot of hard work, I'm off to take some time and figure out what to do next, probably something radically different like being a stone mason or something that means I won't have to look at another server for a long time"
Everyone chuckled but at that moment I felt a pang of jealousy. his comments reminded me of a reoccurring daydream I keep having. See I have poured my life into the marketing and project management field for more than a decade starting right out of school. I have always wondered what it would be like to try something else completely different. Don't get me wrong I love my chosen profession and I think I'm skillful at it, but I'm a curious person and sometimes I just feel like there are other things that I might like to experience. While I don't doubt every job has challenges and complexities I think it might be interesting to deal with different problems. For this to be effective I think I would have to try something so radically different, in other words nothing to do with the Internet or technology.
The New York Times reported this morning that every quarter the US economy traditionally overturns 7 percent of the work force through people leaving and starting new jobs for whatever reasons. So, I must not be alone. It's not that I want to leave my career, I love it, but sometimes I just want to temporarily try something else out. So I recently found a company that is offering exactly what I was looking for, a vocational vacation: http://www.vocationvacations.com/
This company connects people with couple day internships for hundreds of different jobs. It's surprisingly affordable and really interesting. Here are some of the vocations: http://www.vocationvacations.com/StaticDreamJobs/current-dream-jobs.php
Hmm, baseball team general manager, music producer, food critic?
I have not tried any yet I'm thinking my next vacation might be vocational. I'll let you know how it goes.
