Re: career path in the third and fourth decades?

[Monica Cellio <cellio -at- pobox -dot- com>]

Thanks for all the comments so far.  I'm going to wait to make more
detailed responses, but I want to clarify a couple points now since
people have raised good questions.

On Tue, 22 Nov 2005, Dick Margulis wrote:
> The word _career_ carries a lot of baggage in a twenty-first-century 
> postindustrial economy. I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt 
> and assume that all you mean is that you expect to have to work to 
> support yourself for at least that many years--not an unrealistic 
> assumption. 

Correct.  I'm not looking for status and prestige; it's about meeting
current needs and funding a comfortable retirement.  If I could keep
doing what I'm doing and get cost-of-living raises, that'd be fine --
but there comes a point where younger folks will be cheaper and while
I'm good, I may be better than an employer actually feels he needs.
Hence the "do I need to be doing something different?" question.

While I'd like to be able to retire earlier, I currently expect to have 
to remain employed until close to the conventional retirement age to 
make that work out.

>    I've got a pretty good idea of how the first 20-odd years of a
> > tech-writing career can play out,
> 
> WOW!!! Can I discuss my stock portfolio with you?

Well, I said "can", not "always do", and that's from the perspective
of having lived it and having peers in my "bracket".  I hadn't considered
that tech-writing as a field might be new enough to not have many (or
any) 40-year veterans; that's a good point.

Monica

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