What a silly question... this is the problem with society. They have no direction - they think having shiny rocks (the reason humans like shiny is due to water glistening on the horizon) and fancy wheels (an invention from over 5,000 years ago? Give it a break...) is the reason to have a "job". Status... Ego...

All really wrong. You do stuff for passion. I recall Harry Chapin's (the "Cat's in the Cradle" dude) parents (of which Jim Chapin was a famous drummer and teacher) telling him that if he wanted to be a kazoo player, that was OK - just be the best kazoo player.

For instance - too many parents push their kids into what they now call "STEM". These kids have no interest, I deal with them all the time

• an example: I recently had a grad from VA Tech in my lab - #2 grad of his class. I had a mic stand adapter sitting on the bench that I'd made - 5/8 - 27 internal thread I single pointed on a lathe.

So I told this kid about it and how it was great I had a ELS (electronic lead screw) to do it...

"Cool... how do you make threads?" he asks...

I was floored - my knee jerk reaction was, "Really?"

"Nope, they never taught us that..."

So I go into the office and talk to the 3 other ME's we just hired. The one girl mentioned (from Penn State), "No, not really. The only reason I know is my father owns a CNC/machine shop"

I recall sitting outside the freshman dorm waiting for my son after he walked his girlfriend up to her room. Saw a bunch of shiny faced freshmen walking by shouting "Party!!!"

Then it came to me - K-12 is state sponsored day First four years of college are indentured servitude.

Then I recalled my son being invited to attend "Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology" - yea the one Newsweek has rated the best in the country - and getting locked in after an open house , talking to the one teacher that had been there since the beginning - since the Asst. Superintendent set it up - NOT as a "status" thing, but as a model for ALL high schools in Fairfax County, VA.

What did he talk to use about for three hours? How bad it really is. How most of the kids are there for the parents to have some cocktail party fodder about how their "... little Joey or Lisa goes to TJHS..."

PINKY!

Do things for the right reason. Read my rant here: http://www.ajawamnet.com/ajawamnet/mama_i_wanna_be_a_maker.html

where at the end it explains the reasons for REALLY doing something:

From an interview by Scott London with Stephen Mitchell: http://www.scottlondon.com/interviews/mitchell.html

"Mitchell: There's a wonderful story about that in The Second Book of the Tao. It goes like this:

Ch'ing the master woodworker carved a bell stand so intricately graceful that all who saw it were astonished. They thought that a god must have made it. The Marquis of Lu asked, "How did your art achieve something of such unearthly beauty?"

"My Lord," Ch'ing said, "I'm just a simple woodworker — I don’t know anything about art. But here’s what I can tell you. Whenever I begin to carve a bell stand, I concentrate my mind.

After three days of meditating, I no longer have any thoughts of praise or blame. After five days, I no longer have any thoughts of success or failure. After seven days, I'm not identified with a body.

All my power is focused on my task; there are no distractions. At that point, I enter the mountain forest. I examine the trees until exactly the right one appears. If I can see a bell stand inside it, the real work is done, and all I have to do is get started. Thus I harmonize inner and outer. That's why people think that my work must be superhuman."

So you ask why I stayed?

'Cause I love what I do. Most want a million dollars to stop working - I want it to start.

Like maybe figuring out how gravity really works and design something to manipulate it.

THAT's why I stay at doing what I do.

Hope that answers your question...