[Closed] What would be your 'perfect' job

Designing and making bikes/other mechanical things.

Or a professional rowing coach (that's rowing, the sport, not rowing the thing most of us do on here...)

Or probably a professional coach in several other sports actually.

Wouldn't mind being a Dales Park ranger. Not 'perfect' but it would do me.

Ski guide. Just sounds brilliant, spending all your time in the mountains with people who are interested in what they are doing and looking to step outside their normal comfort zone.

travelling the world checking out sustainably run independent adventure travel companies. currently doing it from my computer though...

I'm lucky enough to be doing it.

i often consider this point. I actually enjoy what i do; what i don't enjoy is the stress that having to do it brings. By that I mean, I really need to keep this job in order to maintain the mortgage / std of living, etc. Hence when the other idiots ask me to do pointless and ridiculous things, I can't call them on it, for fear of losing the job. If I had the safety net of not really needing to work, I'd probably be more likely to say what I thought (which is probably right / justified anyway) which would make it even more enjoyable.

As a halfway (because being retired would quickly also become boring) I'd like to drive the DHL van. Listen to the radio, chat up receptionists all day, and still get a wage. Again, i know van drivers will tell me it's hard work and stressful too, but as above, not if you had enough money so you didn't actually have to do it.

Mountain bike trail builder, or something similar.

Holly Willoughby's Bra 🙂

In a perfect world I'd be an elite athelete in the sport of pro cabbage flinging.

They don't ever suggest that one to you at school careers days though do they?

I do occasionally wish that at school they had explained to me that doing science (which I was good at) could lead to all sorts of cool careers. I didn't realise that, learned computers (which was always an effort) and now have an IT job 😐

Sam - me too. Would love to be a coach for Warren Smith or similar.

Just checked Warren's site - you can hire him for £599 a day!

Ski Instructor / MTB guide here, too. Still clinging on to that dream...

EDIT: A friend of a friend works for Warren Smith and has possibly THE best life of anyone I know. He was hired to take a group heli-skiing in Japan last year. Thats WORK to him....

Anything that doesn't involve being away from home in a party/alcohol-free zone until 6th January 🙁

Actually, aside from International Man of Mystery, I could really get to grips with being a virtuoso musician. Piano, violin, or some such classical instrument.

I wanted to be a ecological researcher, then I did it and found it was crap. I'd like to have a small farm if money was no object.

He was hired to take a group heli-skiing in Japan last year

I WANT TO DO THAT... YES I'M SHOUTING.... BUT I REALLY REALLY DO WANT TO DO THAT.

I WANT TO DO THAT... YES I'M SHOUTING.... BUT I REALLY REALLY DO WANT TO DO THAT.

Get in line, Buster

Half the year spent as a scuba instructor somewhere hot and idyllic, the other half spent as a ski instructor/guide. One can dream!

@Jimmy - I'm so in the line. Probably lacking some talent, mostly lacking the balls to ditch everything else and jump.

Complete fantasy, but when I heard there were proposals to reintroduce wolves to the remoter parts of Scotland, I thought wouldn't it be cool to have the job of tracking and monitoring them across the mountains by Land Rover and mountain bike.

jimmy, he's one very lucky guy!

I was close, very close, to doing all I could to make it as far as I could with skiing as a serious career. Fear of either not actually being good enough or getting there then blowing a knee out and being left careerless and pennyless stopped me though.

Well, having had enough of being a courier, 5 years 3 months and knowing full well it was always gonna be a short lived thing (5 years is 4 to many), i'm on a mission in the new year to do what i want to do. Riding for a living has had its moments, i know central London better than the back of my hand and the sights have been something else but painting and getting back into my music are where it's at so yeah..artist and musician....allowing more time to ride for fun.
This, should it go as i'd like, should afford me greater opportunities to see more and experience more. I hope.
Tis sock pulling up time.

007 had a cool job.. I'll have that one.

Recognised for the fantastically talented guitar player that I clearly am, and celebrated around the world. Either that or Working in the fabrics industry ( what I'm actually studying for)

i would love to be a river keeper/ghillee on a hampshire estate, or a road train driver in australia.

random, i know.

Helicopter pilot would do for me...due to health reasons, don't believe it would be possible 🙁

Mountain bike guide half the year, snowboard "host" the other half.

Oh wait... 😉

Half the year mountain bike guiding - very hard work but very rewarding (I've done two seasons guiding).

Other half of the year as a mechanical design engineer working in the automotive industry (I am an engineer but seem to have landed in contract management).

I used to want to be a gamekeeper on a Scottish game estate. That probably comes from the 'beating' i used to do as a kid (flushing out pheasants, not beating people up!).

Now, I'd quite like to be a successfull professional wildlife photographer.

fluffer?

edd + 1 kinda

6 months working on very hitechy problems
6 months being outside helping people have fun and be safe - i.e. a guide of some sort

I think fluffer might be more of a job for the ladies binners 🙂

Pro surfer would be good but useless if you have a family.
Royal Marine (did POC and AIB and passed) Officer seemed like the dream job in my late teens - but glad I didn't go for it.

TBH this job offers flexibility, decentish money and we can operate it from home. It's also very interesting (to us) so without realising, it may be the dream job.

Wouldn't mind running a few hedge funds on the side though 😉

Wait...I could have done both at the same time!

Why did I decide to go into IT...oh yeah, I wanted lots of money.

Write long distance walk guides for Cicerone books.

* I actually have a great job that I find interesting and lucrative enough that being self employed I only need to work a day or two a week.

However I think doing a hobby or a dream as a job is a sure way of finding faults in your dream and turning yourself against your hobby eventually 😉

My brother in law is a mountain guide in the alps. On one level, it sounds incredible, but on another, he's a glorified tour guide with a whole world of potential pain when things go pear shaped. He bases himself in Chamonix for the season, and complains about how many Tour de Mont Blancs he has to do - quite boring and repetitive after a while.

A talented heavy rock guitarist in a constantly global touring band with plenty of girls, drugs & money !

Pah! Seen one mountain? You've seen em all

Norks on the other hand.....

I want a job that involves norks 🙂

I've got it. House husband and full time student. Do a wee bit of maths here, bike ride, housework, bike ride, make the wife dinner as she comes in for work, do a multiweek bike tour, come home do some dusting, then go for a hill walk. Do some structural engineering, take a bottle of whisky to a bothy and have a big fire, clean the bathroom then write an essay. Followed by a bike ride.

something creative

either architecture or interior architecture

or some kind of creative journalism

I want a job that involves norks

A friend of my wife's went for a bra fitting in some independant shop and the lady just weighed her 'norks' in the palm of each hand and told her the bra size...now that's a job.

Always wanted to be an architect, worked with and designed a few air con systems in the past and thoroughly enjoyed that, designing a building must be ace.
Current work is fine, the crisis no, but the work is fine when there is some!

Now I think about it, something with norks has potential.

binners - nipple tweaker?
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I used to be motorbike courier in London. Near perfect, but short term.
Spiderman would be good.

Someone who works on Radio 4's Test Match Special. Just follow the sun all year watching cricket

Backcountry touring ski/snowboard guide in British Columbia.
Maybe a Heliski guide for CMH. although guiding overwright Texans down blue runs might become slightly tedious..

Journalist or writer.

If the legal game goes * up, then I'll probably suck * for pocket change behind the bus shelter, TBH.

Having my own newspaper

Definitely have my own deli. The trick would be not to eat all the food and drink the wine.

Wow! page 2 an no-one has suggested 'blow'.

suck **** for pocket change behind the bus shelter,

You can't hide behind the ones I clean they are all glass

carpet taster! - but in reality a small bike shop with an attatched bakers and coffee/tea/juice/ milkshake bar, probably situated on Torcross with some custom cut singletrack winding its way along the coastline

having read "how to fly a harrier": Harrier Pilot.

i wonder if i can buy one second hand as a "weekend" vehicle.

When I have bad day at work... I quite fancy being a librarian.

On a good day, I wouldn't do anything else.

Wouldn't mind being Sandra Bullock's personal butler, though.

How about STW forum dispute arbitrator. Whatever I decided would be right.

I met a guy at wedding once who designed women's lingerie for a living. He seemed happier than most 😆

Junior School teacher.

I like the job I do, just cannot abide the woman who does the same job and considers herself 2senior" to me, despite working part time & term time only - work out for yourselves who does most of the work!

I'd like to carry on in the job I do now, but loose my work partner somewhere along the way.

Well I've been in the army , was mountain guide and ski guide been a climbing instructor , worked in a few Irish bars , then been an antenna rigger and now a firefighter and they've all been pretty cool jobs in their own way so can't complain 😉

I think some people are very lucky if they end up doing the job that they were meant to do...I mean a top violinist is obviously meant to play a violin for a living, and a top chef is meant to cook stuff.

I don't think I was meant to sit at a desk and send emails all day.

A friend of mine is a carpenter...he goes to work every day and makes stuff out of wood, then he goes home and makes more stuff out of wood in the evenings and at weekends. He loves his job.

I wish I knew what I was meant to do.

Motorbike courier done that !
Living in a commune in south of Spain done that!
Forest conservation project in Botswana done that!
Safari Camp Manager/Guide in the Okavango done that!
Countryside Ranger done that!
Mountain Bike trail building doing that at the moment!

All good but the grass is always greener!
Can't hink what to do next now though.

firestarter - so are you UIAGM mountain guide?

Freeridenick no I was employed on the back of my army training courses

I'd like to travel the UK for a year writing a book about cycling..oh wait..I'm doing that next year 😉

I would like to be the "Avalanche Technician" who sets off the charges in Chamonix to keep the risk down.

Flying around in Helicopters, blowing s**t up! Yeah!

McHamish +1

I envy people like musicians, writers, artists, sportspeople, coaches - something which is so 'them' that it's what they do to earn a living rather than a job that they do because they need money.
Something true to yourself and that you properly believe in, and work with other people who are equally in to what they do...

Film director probably.

Someone good like Gilliam or Matthew Vaughn rather than McG or Michael Bay though.

I think I've pretty much got it.

Working for a bike industry tech startup, in a technical role. So I get to play with cool new technology and cool new bikes & gear, travel around to loads of big bike events, do the occasional review or article and all with a view of the North Shore mountains from my office.

Plus beer in the fridge. Can't forget that.

I've been a bike guide, it was cool but not something I'd want to do longterm.

-There was someone on here a while back who used to build clunker bikes with asylum seekers in Bristol. If I could live financially comfortably (and not in Bristol!) and ride a lot I would love to do that.

-Or i would like to get paid a nice wage for singing in a big choir. Despite my rather ahem, 'colourful' studenthood, I managed to do this for a bit when I was at university and it was loooovley.

Run my own factory producing widgets ...

It appears people want to do their hobby as a job, or just want to spend more time doing their hobbies.

iDave will be along shortly to tell you to stop dreaming and do something about. I knew what I wanted to do in the final year of university, it took 5 years hard work to get qualified/experienced and a year doing a dogsbody job, but the job I'm in is better than I could have imagined it would be. Well worth the wait and effort. University lecturer btw.

Some kind of editing or motion graphics position with a good TV series/film production company.

this topic crops up alot and my theory is that jobs that sound crap are actually pretty good and vice versa. For me being a MTB guide would be terrible, going to the airport every week, fixing lazy sods' bikes, having to ride slowly for some fat git, etc etc. Riding with a bunch of guests is hardly like riding with your mates is it?

Being an accountant say sounds boring but you earn loads (so you can afford to go skiing and riding and live in a house and own a decent bike or five etc), the job is transportable all over the world. So its all spreadsheets and email and conference calls and some of your colleagues are quite dull but not every courier / guide / musician etc is the life and soul.

I'm not an accountant BTW but I think the argument holds true.

I work with some accountants. Their lives and work seem very very dull..

I couldn't do a job I don't enjoy unless I knew it was only a stopgap for something else. Spend far too much time working to sit there looking at spreadsheets and other boring crap all day!

CaptJon - your dream job is to be my spokesman and I claim my £5 😉

perfect job in my mind, is not to have a job, but a scalable income and lots of little periods of 'retirement'

make outdoor movies = MTB and Climbing ( may be some Base Jumping on Thursdaysc)

I'd like to be Bear Grylls, being a hard man where-ever the producers take him.

Or Charlie Boorman, doing stuff on motorcycles for Unicef.

Either that or car designing. In California. 8)

Smokejumper.
http://www.bucktrack.com/Smokejumping.html

I'd like to be a novelist. I've tried it though and it's really hard. My head's always been jam packed full of story ideas but as soon as I try and get them down on paper I just go blank. I'm fine with the high level concept stage, it's the detail that hits me.

I also like the romantic side of being a courier but the crap money, danger of death and general crap conditions put me off.

What I do now really, but more of it, and more money! 😀

I enjoy being creative. I like making stuff that other people enjoy. I'd like more people to enjoy what I do.

I'd like to be able to interact with more people on a daily basis though, I spose.

I'd like to be able to interact with more people on a daily basis though, I spose.

Meeting clients is the worst part about doing creative stuff, because they hardly ever seem to have a ****ing clue - I hate it 😆