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I'm an aircraft engineer and have been for the last 41 years, but soon to retire and ride more routes.

Doing the resurrection shuffle to this thread....

I started off at sea, navigation cadet with P&O general cargo division and RNR. Then came ashore to go farming, but I had already started to get a reasonable return from my photography by supply stock to picture libraries, this was in the days of E6 film (Fuji) or Kodachrome 64. That progressed so I turned full time photographer in 1985. I learned to write and supplied magazines all over the world with feature stories, both words and pictures. Mostly transport subjects and the air industry, I did a fair bit for American Airlines and Continental Airlines, which was handy as it gave me free flights around the world to do motorbike, truck/lorry, boating, fishing or hunting pieces! I still do some for a couple of magazines that are still going strong, but the writing is on the wall. Now I supply safety boat cover for construction types that are working over deep water, bridge works or renovations mostly. This kind of thing:

I just found this discussion. What interesting reading. As for what I do to pay the bills... Nothing! My first 8 years out of school were in restaurant management for a large corporation. It ended up being too much pressure and too many hours. I then went to work for a commercial general contractor as a laborer during the day while going to school at night studying computers. That contracting gig gave me experience in framing, roofing, concrete, and drywall which I will be forever grateful for. School was a two year program after which I went to work for a food service equipment sales company. I was hired to computerize a branch office. The branch manager became disgruntled with the company so started his own competitive company; I was asked to be one of the founding 5 employees. I was the Office Manager, the accounting department, the IT department, and the HR department. Twenty-two years later the company had grown to the point that I had to hire someone to take on some of the accounting and IT work. Eight years after that I retired. That was 2 years ago. I now spend time long distance touring with my wife, providing support and doing beta testing for an email client, being attentive to a number of forums, and doing motorcycle and home repair/maintenance projects.

At age 67 I am in a place that I never expected to be in...retired, happy, healthy, with an empty motorcycle destination bucket list, most of them reached on a Honda Goldwing with my supportive and adored wife on the pillion.

I started as a software developer writing software for a company making microchips (CPUs, memory etc). Then managed the IT operations of a small datacenter . Moved again (shortly) to an engineering job then a presales job (answering RFPs, the technical part of the proposals). Then the last 4 years back to software dev ("cloud" stuff) because the presales work was too much stress for me in the end (and too many travels). I was lucky enough because I was never without a job. I am now retired and I am 63yo