Post: #1

Hey guys,

Here I want to ask you for any opinion, thoughts and advice on my career situation, as on this forum you are travelled, open minded and having similar ideas and mentality as I have. And I get impressions from different parts of the world, and especially from America where probably career things are seen more pragmatically and open minded than in Germany.

I am 38 years old, and I am kind of still searching for my way. But that s another story, let me just give the facts in short and declare my aim, which is getting a possibility to make some money for a normal living outside the 9 - 5 mill. Ideally this would be of course a location independent lifestyle earning a living from my laptop while sitting on the beach , you know.... But as well might be project work like a few months sitting in an office and then taking some time off until the next project,..... whatever.

At this moment I am studying (distance laerning, e-learning) electric engineering including also some computer science ( Programming in C and Java, microcontrollers, PLC-programming). During the next year I hope to finish and hold a paper calling me a bachelor of engineering.
The studies are going well, I have good degrees, but what bothers me more is the lack of practical expertise.

Before that I travelled a lot as a backpacker in younger years and learned the carpenter's trade, worked some time in this field. I loved it and still love it , but can t imagine being dependant for my living on such a physical exhausting work. Although I can somehow do the job I am not too talented as a tradesman, I am a thinker and logical person.

Other fields I work in is tour guide for small groups for hiking in Eastern Europe, at the moment I focussed on Moldova.
And I speak many languages, apart from German fluent English, Russian and Ukrainian and good French and Polish. Thought about translating/interpreting or language teaching but then decided to go better for the technical route.

I have my doubts if it was a good idea to start studying engineering at the age of 35 considering my goals that are already not making a big career and working my ass off, for the big career I am anyway to old I think, but make a normal living and having as much as possible free time, possibilities to travel, to chase girls, do sports. I knew that I am not the type of man getting satisfaction out of a full time office job.
The studies is pretty expensive and more time consuming than I first thought.

Given this, I probably better would have worked as a carpenter or something else, would have made decent money and savings and already could travel some time. Or would have started some blog or anything on the Internet. According to what I read here and on all the blogs of digital nomads, this is the kings' way to make it.

But now I have to face the facts: Already lots of time and money went into these engineering studies and so I suppose the best idea is to first look out if I could use the learned fundamentals to get long term into some kind of technical software development/ programming with freelancing or remote working. Anybody here from this field who might give some advise how to get started and what extra skills I would need to self-study? Probably most things learned in theory are not the same as needed in real life. (??).
Having read already so many books about programming , different languages, but still have no clue how to get started out in the real world.

Last winter I was doing an internship in a company programming a microcontroller in C to process some alarms coming from a machine (PLC). And that s all I did practically in that field.

I am often thinking about starting a business, trying to make some money on the Internet, read so much about this on all these blogs, but I don t know. Can t find an idea. I have lots of interests and talents but nothing really amazing. I love to travel and travelled a lot. But during last 3 years just some shorter trips, nothing special, so what about can I write? Love sports but surely no Mr Muscleman. Love chasing girls, doing street approaches again and again but far away from being the next pick up guru. So really have no certain idea what kind of business I could start.
Also I am not a big selfmarketer. Sure you can learn many things and I already made big progress during last few years but as you know someone should better earn money with his strengths and not fixing weaknesses, right?

Appreciate any thought, comment or advise.

Thanks a lot!