From a specialized job to repairing cars, without experience?

Hello friends,

In the meantime I feel I should make a rather difficult decision, to stay at my current job, or leave it.
My work is sort of railway engineering, in a department of stress analyses and simulations. It is rather specialized and qualified job. I've beed doing it for twelve years for about two companies. My salary is better than of other engineers and I even have a highest pay among us five in the office. The downside of the job is, it is quite difficult to find a job like this in my small country, with only a handful of companies doing those analyses. For some time, I realize I've become a bit too narrowly focused. And that's not very resilient for our post-peak future. Moreover, I am getting more and more annoyed in my current job. Our management wants to screw it up, adding new rules. Now we have fixed vacations, quite a big drop in nearly full glass.
I am 39, I live near place of my work, I can cycle or walk there. I own a flat, with no debts. I have no family, only a couple of relatives in the area.

I think It would be useful to be able to get a more common and practical job. What I have in my mind, is to leave the job and learn Welding at the least. I consider trying to find a car repair job then, although my experience in both welding and car repair is so far none.

Would you dare to leave mostly office-style, highly specialized job, and jump in the water, seeking manual, much less paid job like I mentioned, with prospect of having more experience and flexibility in the future? How can I help myself to make a decision?

Thanks

My opinion: stay in your current job for a while yet, and plan for a transitional period of discernment and preparation before you "jump in the water".

Take some night courses, read lots of books, do some job shadowing with someone who already has the skills you're interested in.

After you've made certain that you'd actually like the new vocation and have some aptitude for it, then it would be time to undertake formal training and get whatever certification would be required in your country.

Would your current job have any provision for taking a leave rather than quitting altogether?

[quote=Yoxa]

Would your current job have any provision for taking a leave rather than quitting altogether?

[/quote]

Our projects schedules are tight enough even now and I don't know about any colleague who took a leave. That makes efforts to change something, more difficult. But I should check if there's any possibility for the leave or try to find some time for the lessons, without getting too exhausted.

2+ years ago, I raised a question about learning some technical skills. Well recently I had found a way to arrange my time and to learn welding. It is strange, sometimes a simple idea takes much time to come to you. So now I have a basic MIG welding certificate. Not a huge achievement, but the overall experience, contacts with new people, a new activity, were all great.  My new skill at least brings me a feeling of a bit more independency and capability of doing something else.

Sorry for the blunt subject "Suck it Up". Unless you feel your job is the next Buggy whip industry your option is to keep it. Good jobs are hard to find, and it appears you are in a sweet spot. Certainly its not a bad idea to learn new skills, but I would recommend that  you NOT quit to spend more time learning new skills. 

I would recommend to first learn which jobs are in demand and pay equal if not better than your current job. There is no point in learning something new if its not in demand, pays less, or is a bigger hassle (ie long commute, crazy scheduling, dangerous, etc). If you manage to find something that is really better, than it might be work your time.

If anything, your available time may be best served in learning how to be more self-reliant. Gardening, canning,, home repair/maintance, machineryvehicle repair/maintanence, etc. 

So TechGuy, you basically recommend – learn skills but don't sacrifice a (more or less) good job for that. Hmm, I'll have to think, what next. My father has a garden, I am a bit reluctant to work there. If I don't visit him for a week, he will do gardening anyway. The technical activities are more difficult to meet with – you can't just go to a car workshop and say "I want to help you"..