Sorry Phil :-(

[Clay B.]

Hobbies are a REAL important part.

I've HAD to come up with hobbies that don't have anything to do with my job, just to keep me from obsessing about work stuff all of the time. I go play billiards, I do some outdoor type hobbies(rafting, snowboarding, etc), I play online games like Everquest II or Dungeons and Dragons Online, I'm still single so chasing(and sometimes catching) girls pops up fairly often....

One of my hobbies has double benifits. My wife and I will go find antique furniture that is in bad shape. I then put it in the garage and restore it. To me this a great relaxing hobbie cause I can just work at my own pace and it occupies my mind enought that I forget work. The benifit is I now have some really nice funiture in my house. I am now at the point I am replacing my first projects with ones I am doing now that are better quality work. The extra benifit is my wife thinks I fix the furniture to make her happy. Who am I to argue with her repaying my effort.
It has been my observation that if you are in this feild you have to stay occupied so if you are picking a hobby look for soemthing that can challenge you like what we do, just not to the same degree. Thats the irony of it all. To recharge your "batteries" you have to find something to do.

 

[Ron Beaufort]

some things that work for me:



three years ago I built a two-car “garage” workshop out behind the house ... table saw, scroll saw, router, drill press, etc. ... nothing fancy ... nothing really expensive ... I designed the shop from the ground up with “relaxation” (not “work”) in mind ... the concrete pad extends 8 feet in front to make a porch complete with 4 rocking chairs ... I put a “tin” roof over the porch ... as soon as it starts raining, my little wife and I run out back and listen to the rain hit that roof ... a 16-foot wide garage door rolls up between the shop and the porch ... on one side wall - right inside that door - is a wood burning fireplace insert ... with a brick hearth that I built myself ... I won’t tell you how many times I built and then rebuilt that hearth to get it straight enough to suit me ... but now I can “sort-of-kind-of” lay bricks ... when the weather is cool enough, my wife and I light the fire and watch it - and talk to each other - for hours ... the neighborhood kids (we don’t have any of our own) come over when they smell the smoke and we roast hot dogs and marshmallows ... everyone told me to put in a pot-bellied stove instead of the open fireplace ... “you’ll get more heat that way” ... I don’t want it for the heat ... I want to be able to see the flames ... I want to be able to toss in an occasional pine cone and watch it burn ... I want to be able to poke at the logs when they don’t burn evenly enough to suit me ...



no sound system ... no radio ... as many of you know, we don’t even have a TV in the house anymore ... the main thing is to enjoy the peace and quiet whenever you get the chance ... and if you don’t have enough chances to enjoy it, then MAKE chances for yourself ...



as for hobbies, I’ve recently taken up chess again for the first time in about 15 years ... I don’t actually “play” chess ... I just poke around with it as a pastime ... I’ve got a 20-year old computer lost in a closet somewhere that can beat me anytime I feel the need to be taken down a notch ... but I haven’t used it lately ... instead I love to keep a book full of chess puzzles handy by my Lazy-Boy chair ... some problems take me a few seconds to solve ... some take a week or more ... I never hurry ... and that’s the point ... but the mental stimulation takes my attention away from whatever else my mind has decided it wants to worry about ...


I LOVE my job ... I really ENJOY what I do ... but then again, I’ve got sense enough to know the difference between my job - and my life ... I don’t have an Internet connection at home ... no email there either ... now I do keep a couple of extra PLCs set up in the back bedroom just in case I want to “piddle around” with a project from time to time - but serious “work” requires a trip to the office ...



my boss and I made a deal before I went to work for him ... the room that I work in needs to have windows ... I can do one week - maybe two weeks - without any windows ... but after that, I’m pretty much fried ... I can still function, but not at anything near my normal capacity ... when it rains, I need to see the drops falling on the landscape bushes ... I need to see the clouds - the birds - the world outside ...



anyway, I’m not sure if any of this helps ... but the thread itself is a good one ... just remember, when the day is finally over, then the day is finally over ... period ...

 

[Jnelson]

Excellent Reply Ron!

All of the responses so far have been excellent. Keep em coming.

I appreciate the participation and advice.

 

[n521554]

When things are going good, you are the main man in the house but when things fall apart, the garbage man throws you in his truck.

I seem to find that when things are going good you are a target for redundancy, when they are bad your phone rings at the best part of a dream.

It's sure is nice to have a place like this to vent. Hopefully with the help of each other we will be able to keep some of our coding stress to a minimum.

 

[TimothyMoulder]

I find that tranquility is not an emotion I can manufacture. I'm either peaceful or not.

But when I'm in an uproar, I play video games. Sometimes, nothing satisfies the restless beast like some good ol' fashion (simulated) violence.

TM

 

[Steve Bailey]

The dirty little secret about the kinds of people attracted to technological professions is that we need the stimulation provided by the stress. I'll bet that if John took a job mowing lawns, within a season he'd be working out methods to 'juice up' the equipment to get more done in less time. Pretty soon he'd be the 'go-to' guy any time there was an equipment problem. Then the owner of the landscaping company would be on his back to "keep 'em rolling. We don't make any money while they're sitting in the shop".

We may not have any control over external events, but we can can control how we react to them. It seems that a little stress is a good thing. It helps us maintain our 'edge'. It gives a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But it's definitely not a case of "if a little bit is good, then a lot must be great".

My advice to John would be to not bother looking for a low-stress job. Instead, look for ways to manage the inevitable stress generated by the job you already have. It could be a hobby. It could be volunteering as a Scoutmaster or Little League coach or any other form of community service. Heck, even hanging out here at PLCs.net can be theraputic.

 

[testsubject]

The dirty little secret about the kinds of people attracted to technological professions is that we need the stimulation provided by the stress. I'll bet that if John took a job mowing lawns, within a season he'd be working out methods to 'juice up' the equipment to get more done in less time. Pretty soon he'd be the 'go-to' guy any time there was an equipment problem. Then the owner of the landscaping company would be on his back to "keep 'em rolling. We don't make any money while they're sitting in the shop".

We may not have any control over external events, but we can can control how we react to them. It seems that a little stress is a good thing. It helps us maintain our 'edge'. It gives a reason to get out of bed in the morning. But it's definitely not a case of "if a little bit is good, then a lot must be great".

My advice to John would be to not bother looking for a low-stress job. Instead, look for ways to manage the inevitable stress generated by the job you already have. It could be a hobby. It could be volunteering as a Scoutmaster or Little League coach or any other form of community service. Heck, even hanging out here at PLCs.net can be theraputic.

My wife has often said I look for stress. Maybe there is some truth to it. I know I feel more alive when I am up to my armpits in a problem than any other time.

 

[icky812]

My wife has often said I look for stress. Maybe there is some truth to it. I know I feel more alive when I am up to my armpits in a problem than any other time.

Hmmph... My wife says the same thing. I do tend to enjoy my job more when I am deep into something that is totally off-the-wall and no easy solution in sight.

Thanks for the thread John. I've managed to understand quite a bit more about myself whilst reading it.

 

[Tom Jenkins]

Hmmph... My wife says the same thing. I do tend to enjoy my job more when I am deep into something that is totally off-the-wall and no easy solution in sight.

My wife makes me go through a drill occasionally, one inspired by AA. I have to stand in the middle of the room, raise my right hand, and say "My name is Tom and I am a problem solving junky."

If there is a twelve step program for this, I don't want to know about it. And don't you dare tell my wife about it either!

 

[geniusintraining]

My wife makes me go through a drill occasionally, one inspired by AA. I have to stand in the middle of the room, raise my right hand, and say "My name is Tom and I am a problem solving junky."

If there is a twelve step program for this, I don't want to know about it. And don't you dare tell my wife about it either!

Tom,

Don’t tell anyone….it will be our secret….but the 12 step relief is, post 12 replies at PLCS.net nightly forever... its like a drug, new problems daily, new solutions nightly

 

[Rube]

I have been working with PLCs for ten years now, controls for twenty. The last two weeks, I have been sweating whether I was going to be promoted to Maintenance Supervisor or not. We, another Technician and I, are renovating one line and building another--both rather substantial conveyor systems, and rather complicated. The renovation of the one line will happen primarily during production hours. I know that this is going to be stressful, mostly because of the deadlines and budgets, as well as working with a green engineer. I have learned to live with a huge amount of stress during my older years by developing a "do what you can" mentality.

Today, a corporate email went out, stating that I had been promoted to Supervisor of the Maintenance Dept., where my responsibilities will include "stuff I do now" and "other stuff we want you to start doing". I'm sure budget, up-time numbers and personnel issues will add to the stress level, especially while I adjust to my new position.

But also today, when I walked through my front door at home, just like every day last week, just like every day the week before, just like...

...my two daughters ran all the way from the living room, grabbed me around the waist, and gave me a huge welcome-home hug. And again, I realized why I do what I do--even with the good and the bad.

I applaud you, Mr. Nelson. If you really didn't care, you would have never posted your sentiments.

 

[LStewart]

3 years ago I was promoted to controls tech after 21 years as maintenance tech. 3 years ago I was filled with self doubt and scared I would fail. When I started, I barely knew how to generate a drawing, start a program from scratch, program a panelview, all I knew is this is something I enjoyed and wanted to do, because I had learned on my own and did a lot of programming as a maintenance tech when all of our controls engineers fled a sinking ship I got the job. I have succeeded, I have juggled 3 and 4 projects at a time,(we have 5 product lines in our facility), I delivered...on time, before time, organized, documented, detailed,working machines. I loved it! As my skills improved the better I became! I love it when someone asks if I can make a machine do something and I can tell him, "tell me what you want and I will make it do it!"(even though sometimes this past year I was given things to do I had no clue how to do!) but I succeeded. I loved it! 3 weeks ago I go into work...and am told that because I have such good skills they are promoting me to ME Tech! I don't want to do that! They say that they need me on this one product line desparately! I don't know anything about being a ME tech! What am I supposed to do? I make machines work! I control them! I am so disallusioned! I like building machines,modifying machines, programming, fixing! So I go into work everyday now, I now am to "assist the ME's" but we can't do anything to the machine today, they are running! But I am resolved not to fail, I am going to learn, and in 3 years, I will be successful at whatever it is I am supposed to do! Or be back in maintenance!

 

[sapoleon]

Well, I haven't been in this for too long. In a while is going to be 3 years. A lot of extra hours. Allways past death line. Everything is urgent. I must make 3 projects together. So, I'm writing the code for a machine, with HMI and everything, and it have to be with S88 (nice, but a pain in ). A the same time, i get 3 phone calls an hour from a plant that they have a problem in the production line, that must be solved yesterday... (no to say that the 3 phone calls are from 3 different people). So, I just take some minutes, and relax... and write this because I don't know how to handle it without being also today till 22:00 working.... but... in this country there is a popular saying, very popular saying, that says... "Its going to be all right". The thing is nobody says when.

There are days like that (today for example), and I can't tell I like them. I just don't know how to handle the stress.

But, the thing is, that I like what I do now. I like the problemm solving and commisioning better that programming from the start. I allready tryied no thinking jobs. With and without stress, and what can I say, I get bored. In no time, I get bored. It's nice, but in no time, my mind start to goes off, and I can't find the pleasure of it. So... I'm stuck with this kind of work.

I've started some recreations to stress off, and that helps, at least when I'm at it. (diving, windsurf, iaido, iodo, trekking)

Non the less, sometimes, I still wonder if this is what I really want to do. Should I change now?

back to work... thanks.