Tag: career

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

— Zig Ziglar (1926 – 2012) world-renowned motivational author and speaker

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“So,” friends ask, “How is retirement going?”

“Great,” is my go-to answer. “I get just enough of it … between calls from people who need my expertise for a while.”

I’ve always advocated that careful planning of one’s career, even through retirement, is a crucial step in life. Having survived my attempts to chart a course from a very early age, I offer my thoughts on successes and failures while adding the best advice all. Advice is worth what you pay for it..

Before entering junior high, scrutinizing Popular Mechanics magazine classified pages at the barber shop was my source for career possibilities. Rare opportunities for unique businesses. Things like making authentic Bowie knives to marketing assembly plans for constructing scale models of the U.S.S. Constitution. In a bottle.

One I liked a lot seemed like a lucrative field. Army surplus dealers. “Return the postage free card for details,” the ad beckoned. “High demand, big profits.”

Exploring these and other rare opportunities kept both me and the Mount Pleasant, Texas, postmaster busy. My requests for information in outgoing mail and loads of informational literature coming in.

My concern was about which one of these money makers would be the best choice. The postmaster’s concern was which one of them I might be harboring plans to enter.

“You’re not thinking about anything like mail-order pot­bellied stove kits are you,” he quizzed me one day as I handed him another stack of postcards.

My search was going well when one Saturday afternoon while pondering empty pockets in front of the old Martin Theater in downtown Mount Pleasant, Texas, I heard voices. Mystic musings offering new concepts on career choice. “You see, son,” Dad said as he put his arm around me. “Think about this. No work … no money.”

I think he sensed I was broke and had missed the sci-fi flick matinee “I Married a Man From Outer Space.”

From that day forward, my life became a testbed for various after-school careers. I.E. Paying jobs. Sweeping floors at Perry Brothers five-and-dime store after school. Working Saturdays in the men’s department at Beall’s. Pumping gas and washing driveways at the Fina Station at night.

Efforts that dropped postage-free postcards going out in exchange for spending money coming in. Plus, providing valuable experience. Experience that led to seeking college advice on careers that didn’t involve manual labor. ” Well, Leon, looking at your grades,” I remember MPHS counselor Mrs. Sanders telling me, “It’s tough to tell … um, exactly what your field of expertise might be.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I replied. “I was trying to decide between truck driving and funeral director. But I really enjoyed Mr. Murray’s mechanical drawing class, so i’m leaning now toward being an architect.”

So, with a high school diploma plus extracurricular credits in fast cars, loud music, and late-nights, I was off to college to study building design. It was the beginning of five years spent trying to circumvent the evil conspiracy among college professors to prevent me from passing math courses and working when not in classes. To stay in school. Auto body shops, wrecker driving, and oil roustabout to name a few.

Then one day to everyone’s surprise, when the registrar’s office wasn’t looking, I slipped out the back door of East Texas State University with a degree in psychology and art.

“Tell me,” my understanding father asked after graduation, “what is it you plan to do with this varied preparation for your future.”

“It’s really very simple, Dad,” I assured him with my best college graduate look. “Unless I change my mind before Monday, I think I’ll teach school.”

Not long after that, by pure luck, I was afforded the opportunity to get the best career advice ever from motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar. All right, so we just happen to get on the same hotel elevator together. I was still the only one in the room with him. For 12 whole floors.

“If you can’t control the events that happen to you, you can control the way you choose to respond to them,” he offered with a smile and a handshake.

All that said, I’m hoping to finish my long-awaited book by the end of the year. And I will include in the forward how all of this careful planning was crucial in leading me to a successful career … in communication and journalism.

I still get Army surplus brochures, though. And I’ve got a couple of canteens and a folding field shovel.

If anyone’s searching for a career path.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.