how can you tell when its time for a change?

For us men, we know when to say when.  I’ve read that men do three career changes in a life.  I’ve counted mine.  I’m up to three now.  These would be completely different career paths.  The one I come back to more than once is archeology and anthropology because its taught me more about how life and people operate than any other I’ve done.  My time in the computer technology industry has taught me that working in a start up often ends up not working at all.  But when I did archeology, I had this cosmic connection of outdoors, comeraderie, philosophy, belief and ideology.  Often, I would meander to a local ‘watering hole” and meet wiht others that found stones and bones.  My mentor RWR would often join us at a local Pizza joint after a day out and we would drink some amount of beer, talk about the richness and tapestry of life.  I learned early on that I wanted to do the thing that RWR did; but I wanted to do it differently.  No one can emulate what another does and gain from it.  I wanted archeology but on my own and not a mere copy of what RWR had.  My wife and I decided that it was time to leave this place and go to New Mexico because it was different, it seemed the archeology was better, and that I could study in a cross section of the plains and the southwest.  All of that was true; but I ended up back in the Mojave Desert working after. 

Archeology also allows one to transcend the norms of life and apply the lessons learned doing it to other challenges.  When I moved to doing “technology” it dawned on me that the people I found there were great and fun; but they sure were not “the cowboys of science”.  Now I feel sometimes that my sunset days are approaching with this particular thread.  I have never felt like a zealot with what I use to get a job done.  I love the idea of Linux and its promise and what it does.  I also know that you need to bound all that with a healthy dose of what it takes to get at your particular reality.

Archeology prepared me for computer technology in many ways.  I had learned about stone tools because they transcended just the makers of them.  One could delve into more interesting social and cultural and technological patterns.  The use of technology transcends the mere OS of choice and actually empowers people to do more with the tools they have.

So anthropology by extension prepares people for lives outside anthropology.  I had wondered once how many people stayed in anthropology after X years.  I think people naturally move on, find new things, and travel across many spectrums looking for their success and reality.  Perhaps they borrow bits and pieces from each thing that lead them to success.

I have this feeling at some discrete point I may do that.  Or I may leave it all behind and go back to traveling the hills and mountains and reading other books and not really caring what I run on a computer compared to what it allows me to get done.  People made stone tools for reasons and people use computers for reasons.  Are there patterns to those techno-choices?  I bet there are.

Perhaps its the stuff that a good “coming of age” novel is all about…