Mike Rowe is nailing it out there on TV. Hopefully he reaches some, as you said. There's real money in what he preaches, rather than the nonsense of the liberal left.
If I were a young buck, I would take up the trades for sure. Now I'm a bit too old and too worn out in the flesh to make the shift to a physically demanding skilled trade, but I often think about what it would be like to do an honest day's labor and feel good about it when the day is done. The white collar world doesn't have the appeal it once did for me and I sometimes think I made the wrong career choices in life. I've changed my attitude towards my kids and their futures and I encourage them to seek more options than college. I think they will choose the right path and do something real and worthwhile instead of carrying mountains of school debt and working in soulless corporate hellholes.
Yeah, I had the best of both worlds and am retired now from aerospace. I did tech writing for new programs in Minuteman missiles, so I had the office job, but got to go out to subcontractors and do hands on with new equipment, then teach Air Force types how to use it. So it was part office work, part actual fun stuff ... I enjoyed the hell outta it. It was a career path I would've never even dreamed of growing up, but joined the Air Force and they decided I was going to be a electronics, Electro-mechanical type in Minuteman. Sometimes you just stumble into what's best for you, with a little push, i suppose - LOL
Sounds like you had a great career with some exposure to things that others will never have again. Not many can say they got to be a part of our national defense in the way you have so that's definitely something to be proud of. My hat's off to you, good sir.
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