You know you're in the right career when...

Mad Dog_2

You go to sleep 💤 😴 thinking about plumbing and heating and waking up ready to engage again.....My good friend Doug Prescott (How you know, Doug!!! - inside joke) owner of Argo P & H if Franklin Sqaure Long 🏝 Island NY
Discussed that at Conan Ford's Keg  Party in Elmont in 1986 when we were both about a year in to the trade.  Always loved the pipe trades....Mad Dog 🐕 

EBEBRATT-Ed

I was that way for a long time. You to go home from work , eat then drive back to the shop, practice welding, solder some scrap copper together etc etc etc. Couldn't get enough.

It was good and bad. I worked every day for 46 years (unless I was sick) it kept me employed I had 5 jobs in those years. Never was out of work except once when I quit. I was so mad at them I stayed out and collected unemployment (which they tried to fight and they lost).

But I had no balance to my life and missed out on a lot of things. Worked all the OT I could get. Even when I was in my 50s and 60s they would ask me to work OT and I would say only if you can't get someone else so I would end up working anyhow.

Mad Dog_2

I'm already getting AARP lit in the mail for last 5 years.  As tired as I am, I only sleep for about 5 hours and I'm good to go again.  Thats why you see my posts in the wee hours..much of my day is supervisory, paperwork and consulting so I'm not carrying 6" No Hub up the stairs or humping boilers out of basements 6 days a week like I did up until about 5 years ago.  What I meant is that I don't see my interest in the trade ever diminishing...I am still as enthusiastic and excited about designing a job on paper, picking out the fittings and watching it (not always touching) go together as I was as a teenager.  Mad Dog

Dave Carpentier

I think thats a cool thing about trades. There's always some new site or task or trouble or equipment. I dont imagine an insurance salesman thinks about his work much after hours, and likely hates the routine (but I could be wrong, everyone is wired a little different).
Main thing is, dont hate your job. If you do, consider something else once conditions allow. Life is too short.

Mad Dog_2

Totally, I never thought I could love anything as much as my first two loves Football and Thoroughbred Racing. Taking on a huge  Barreling Full Back head on up the middle or watching horses break from the starting gate up close are thrills you only know if you've experienced them!!  Getting in to the NYC Plumbers Union (Local #2 Forever!) At 19, refocused me and put me on a great journey and quest for knowledge and hand-to-hand-"combat" skills in the learning of the plumbing, through the Apprenticeship,  and then heating through Dan And his books and seminars.  I met my old boss "Uncle Richard" English at the Plainview Holiday Inn in 1996 at A Lost Art of Steamheating Seminar (That was probably my 3rd!).  Fresh out of Stony Brook, I was eager to plunge back in to P & H full time.
I worked under Richie's Tutelage for about 3 yrs and learned The Whole "Long Island " thing...roughing dormers and extentions, doing radiant 3 or 4 times a week...exotic sounding boilers like Vallaint and Buderus!   We worked in The Long Island Gold Coast Great Gatsby Mansions Holohan wrote about...a HUGE steam boiler on the Estate of The Grace Shipping Magnates, Owner of Topps baseball Cards & Matchbox Cards, homes with 12 Bathrooms 🚻 and Carriage Houses, Old Converted Barns.  We also repaired slab leaks in the copper  Radiant tubing of Levittown...Richie Bought me a sonar-thingee with a big head set that would pinpoint the slab leak.  I learned cost of doing business, the late great  Frank Blau"s Flat Rate system, how to sell to a lady in Levittown and a lady in Upper Brookville...I worked side by side with Richie, Michael Pedecini and HIS Mentor, Jimmy The Gent Burke (fastest gun in the West).  We did state of the art boiler rooms with the board on the wall...nobody was doing that on Long Island 🏝 then atleast in our area.  We also banged out oil to  oil Peerless boilers 3 to 4 zones or steam in 8-10 hours...wired & fired ...NEXT!!  go like gangbusters..I've been looking and hoping for an eager kid like me to come along so that I could impart my wisdom and knowledge like Richie did for me....I thought I had one or two over the years but they petered out...(too hard, dirty, long hours) .boo 🤔 hoo. I guess I am a RARE breed, Bird 🐦 today...Ill keep waiting...Mad Dog 

Larry Weingarten

Hi @Mad Dog_2 , One can teach in person... or not. You have the options of writing and video for sharing what you know also. New teaching skill-sets? Might be fun! Heck, you're already writing!

Yours, Larry

Mad Dog_2

Hmmm..Thanks Larry.  Mad Dog

unclejohn

I remember dreaming about boilers for six hours and then waking up and finishing the job I was dreaming about. 

Mad Dog_2

Besides being tired, I'm almost let down when the jobs over.  The most exciting part for me is Building the Steam headers or Hot Water manifolds.  The BEST part of a boiler install is flipping the switch and hearing the  "WOOOFFFFFF" of a gas boiler or the distinct sound of atomized #2 Fuel oil igniting like a mini Turbojet Engine....THAT MEANS WERE GETTING PAID TONIGHT!!! I prospered ANOTHER day...to pay the mortgage and the kid's tuition!   Mad Dog

ChrisJ

There's many times I dream that I'm at work and then wake up and have to go to work.
I think the worst was when I was dreaming I was basically at work all day and then was closing up the shop getting ready to go home and my alarm went off to wake me up to go to work.

That felt like a really long day......

lager

One time I was dreaming of work, I looked over my first wife (who sadly died of Breast Cancer at age of 48, in July of 2005)
I told her to get in the ditch & man that shovel, she told me in the morning, she had never heard me talk that way to anyone. She said if there was ditch in the bedroom, she would have jumped in it !