Working in HR? If you could start again, would you?

My "first" career was in electronics in the RAF, after which I took some "time out" as a semi-professional musician and using those electronics skills to fix guitar-amps, electronic (musical) organs and disco-rigs. That led to a Christmas-day meeting with a trainee physiotherapist in a Folk-club (the Black Horse at Telham in Sussex) which led to a 2nd (real) career in the Ambulance-service, a wedding, three children and three grandchildren! A sojourn into private-sector international medical transportation was great fun and that was where the HR-stuff started, working around "moonlighting" NHS Dr's and Nurses shift-patterns, qualifications, organising people, interviewing etc. etc. Then it was back to the NHS for a while as a unit administrative manager at a physically disabled children's school/hospital, then running a multi-agency project placing people with disabilities into (real) work; just prior to the DDA becoming law. (Much more HR!) Funding changes caused chaos a month before the project's renewal, leaving sixty-some people with no support and me working 18-plus hour days trying to patch up the holes.... until stopped by a heart attack at 49.

A year of not being allowed to work, acquiring clinical depression, and studying (stress, depression and HR) led to career 3; HR "full time".

So I sort of staggered into HR thirty-some years ago, by default, wandered around doing it by accident for ten years, and then realised it was my job some time later.

Would I do it again?

Apart from the Heart Attack and the Depression (which lurks around permanently), I guess I would; but I feel I am better at it (if any good at all) for having been through the disciplined tensions of the cold-war RAF, the mayhem of my time as a musician (and yes, I still play too), the years learning about people in the worst hours of their lives during my time as an Ambulanceman; the humbling but rewarding years working with children and adults with disabilities and MH problems and, yes, I guess even learning about being one of those "patients" myself.

So would I do it? Yes.

Could I do it? I'd have to be bl**dy balmy!

But it's still fun :-)