Hello Texas,
I was driving in this morning thinking about plastic and all the things that are made with plastic, kind of daydreaming when I had to slam my brakes on to avoid hitting the car in front of me. Needless to say I said a bad word and had coffee all over my lap. Hot coffee aside, I couldn’t help but think about how happy I truly am that I get to come in and build molds and do molding and talk to customers about molds and molding every single day! I mean who’s with me here?! I sincerely hope that you too love your job whatever that might be, and if you don’t then find what you do love and try to monetize it. My favorite thing to do at work is to tear a new mold base out of a crate and get it on the bench to start the disassembly. (Note to self- write a blog about the process from start to finish) The smell of the oils that the mold base supplier slathers on it, figuring out how to get a mold with no lift bolts in it onto the bench without hurting myself. Call me crazy but that’s what makes me happy. I do have a great mold designer but sometimes I will do the design myself if it’s not too time-consuming an ordeal. It’s mentally stimulating to figure out where everything is going to go and how to place ejector pins and waterlines. It’s tempting to go ahead and get the A or B plate into process while finishing up the design but it’s not good practice. The reason is that there is a good chance that something will interfere with something else when you do it that way. Better to have the whole mold design finished before beginning I say. I believe that when you love what you do it ends up not being like a regular day in day out job. Sure there are times when I hate molds and I never want to look at one again but it’s a shortlived thing that I tend to get over very quickly. In fact, I have a picture of the last time clock I ever punched on the last day that I punched it! I snapped a quick pic of it knowing that the entrepreneurial road ahead would be fraught with speed bumps and valleys and low points and that I would need that picture to remind me of the alternative to self-employment. Not that there is anything wrong with working at a competitors plastic company I just prefer to eat my own kill. I was a “valued” employee at one time and I did enjoy that too but this is much more rewarding for sure. So Texas, I love my job in plastics and I hope you love yours too! I encourage you to take a chance and go for your dream whatever that is. Don’t do it “sometime” because “sometime ain’t never NOW” !
Peace, love, and plastic !