Preoccupations | Stephen Moyse: Hitting the Brakes on a Dream Career
December 27, 2009 by admin
Filed under Career News and Advice
I GRADUATED from York University in Toronto in 1975 with an English degree and worked as a junior copy clerk at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation there. The next year I bought a motorcycle and wanderlust hit. In 1977, I traveled to Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, and ended up staying. I’ve always liked big machines, so I got a job driving trucks for what was then Esso. Then I took a job with the British Columbian postal service.
Stephen Moyse
Stephen Moyse exulted in his work as a tour bus driver for Gray Line West.
My last job, years later, would put me back behind the wheel, driving a tour bus. I felt as if I had come home.
My father was ecstatic when I joined the postal service. He was a Rhodes scholar and a vice president with the Canadian corporation Alcan and wanted to see me settled in a good job. When I was younger he tried to steer me toward the law, and the Esso job went against his grain.
It didn’t matter that the postal service job was clerical and terribly boring; he was overjoyed that I’d have a pension.
I sorted mail for 20 years and then moved to another job as a writer in the government pension department. In 2003 I left that job and thought I’d be a freelance writer for a while, but I found that it wasn’t easy.
In 2005, I saw an ad in the newspaper for a tour bus driver for Gray Line West in Victoria. The big machines were calling again. I applied …
Read the original article at NYTimes