Diving vs. Career and Home Choices

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

Is it two hours away from any kind of diving or just the diving you are used to? There's gotta be a hole with water around there somewhere.).

Many springs nearby. But springs are pretty boring.

OK ... unless you are an advanced cave diver, which I am not.

Would have gone for that instinctively when I was younger, but now I would rather shoot some hogfish, marvel at the myriad of other saltwater marine life, and enjoy a delicious fish dinner when I get home.

Sure I could be lured into cave diving still if I had a buddy who was a fanatic about it, but it's no longer my first instinct. Broken bones from rock climbing and motocross, near misses in airplanes, ice climbing and too many other youthful indiscretions to mention have left me a somewhat slower and definitely more contemplative person. :wink:
 
Will the move offer more opportunities for you in other aspects of your life? What about the rest of your family?

Great question. Like I said, it is a so-so opportunity, so mitigating factors (like diving) come into play more than they would otherwise. "The rest of my family" consists of my wife, dog and cats. Wife is very content where we are.

Dog and cats are playing coy with me when I ask them about this potential move. Pretty much, their response seems to be, "Is there a treat in this for me? If not, I would like to go lay down and lick my a**s."
 
So, my question to you is: How much of a role does scuba play in your job choices? How much of a role does it play in your choice of where to live?

Scuba plays no roll in my job choices. But diving is very important to me and I would certainly turn down a different job, even a better one, if it meant having to become a vacation diver.

How far is too far to drive is really a personal thing. I live about an hour away from my favorite places to dive and I don't see that as a problem. I would travel 2 hours if I had to. A close friend of mine took a job about 2 hours from his nearest decent diving and he hasn't been diving in ages.

R..
 
diving is very important to me and I would certainly turn down a different job, even a better one, if it meant having to become a vacation diver.

I was going to say this same thing. No way would I make a choice that made me into non-regular diver, and/or someone who had to wait for vacation to get wet. Does not suit me at all.

Diving has narrowed down the desirable places to live. For now, I think there is no escaping the fact that something quite immaculate should be offered that I would accept something that would take me too far from any water. I do not need to live next to ocean but I need to have some divable water nearby.

Then again 2 hrs is not such a long drive in my books. I would weigh my options of course but 2hrs is still easily a day trip and can be done every weekend. Naturally, if it makes arranging buddies etc harder then it can become an issue.
 
If one is creative, adaptive, willing to sacrifice, flexible, and a little bit lucky, there is no reason why one cannot have both- a great career and great diving/surf in the neighborhood. Set a goal, then make it happen.

TOTALLY!

That's why I emigrated..... :D



LOL! I have not worked a 40-hour week in years.

Neither have I. It's a bad week if I have to work more than 30 hours..... :cool2:
 
Just make sure you get your dive fix in exotic holiday location, there is a ton of fantastic diving around the globe...!
 
I would certainly turn down a different job, even a better one, if it meant having to become a vacation diver.
In New York I took 5 or 6 weeks a year, so I didn't find my vacation-diver status limiting. Here in Hong Kong, the demands of starting up a new business have limited me to the occasional long weekend. I expected to be past that by now, but it looks like like I'll be fully engaged by work for the foreseeable future. There is decent local diving here, which I'm going to check out this summer, but part of the appeal of vacation diving for me is the ease of it--not of the actual diving, though that is often the case, but the ease of the logistics. I really don't want to fight HK traffic for hours to do a mediocre dive. Which I guess shows that I'm not as avid a diver as many others here, and why my career, relationships, and family easily trump diving on my list of priorities.
 
Lucky guy, Andy NZ.

Vlad, 5-6 weeks is not an option. I haven't taken more than a few days off at one time in years. It's not that my bosses are ogres, it's that I am overly devoted to my job. I fully recognize no one really appreciates that, and I am probably a chump, but it is a character flaw that comes from the way I grew up or something.

It's funny, I was planning to do a long Keys trip in July (reefs and wrecks), and I started telling my boss Monday I would be taking some time off as dive season ramped up. He said, "I figured that. Just don't plan on doing any diving from July XX to XX." The same dates as my planned trip. He'll be on vacation!

:shakehead:
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom