Guidance?
Anyone able to help me out here? I'm in a different space than most I think? Also, I'm "old" (I turned 38 this year), and I'm thinking about a career pivot that kind of points me towards something, new? I don't know. Excuse the wall of text, I swear I get to talking about geology eventually.
TL;DR - has been aviator wants to know if jobs about rocks are more interesting and outdoor than asking Codex to write code for me.
So... first I live in Alaska, I'm from here, left and came back - even though I hate the winters, it's home. I lived my dream through my late teens and 20s, I was a pilot, flew all over the state, flew all over the country even, had adventures, etc. Then I got sick. I went blind for a bit (that's better now some, and I can drive again, but it sucked) because I got MS. Long story short I lived but it was unpleasant to say the least. It's still unpleasant at times though thankfully most of my damage is in my eyes and damage to my sense of self.
Whatever, though, I'll keep fighting. So, at the time I got sick, not knowing what to do, I decided to pivot to IT stuff because I've always been interested in programming and math (my undergrad is in math), and I got a masters in computer vision (because hey, if I can't see, maybe the robots can see for me). That worked fine, I immediately got hired for a boring state software job for about a year and a half to two years, and then started on my own this winter.
That's working and things are going "ok." I have an entrepreneurial sort of bent, so I like it well enough. I'm making money doing consulting, writing code (well, to be honest, mostly these days AI writes all the code), and I'm "living the dream" so to speak, but to be honest, I'm kind of bored and I really miss being outside or exploring rural AK during my working day. Like, I hardly do any sort of mathematics professionally writing code, I don't really use much of my skills in CV or programming from college really - I mean, kind of, but in industry, the customers don't give a damn about if the code is clean or whatever. They want things to make their lives easier - and that's kind of fun, but most of my professional life is thinking about how systems work now and architecture.
And I'm inside most of the day. Since I work for myself, I can take walks, but... walking around Anchorage is not the same as going to Dutch harbor, or landing in some random village in Kodiak or whatever. I get that I was privileged and fortunate and I'll probably never get to see Mt. Pavlov erupt from the air again, or a jokelhaup happen again. I get it. I was lucky. Still, while I am making things work, but I still feel kind of lost. A big part of "who I am" was tied up in flying, and that's fine that that's over, but I do miss being out at the edge of the earth. I knew words in dying languages, and saw the Nogahabara dunes from low level - I still have no idea what the hell made those things?
I get that I'm more of an indoor cat these days what with having some visual limitations and a tired body. I just spent 10 days working at the build site for our cabin, I am not as strong as I was 20 years ago. That's fine. But maybe there's some other field I could go explore, where maybe I could get to see amazing things, be outside, etc.? Maybe I could use calculus in anger on the job and actually have to know stuff, know about stuff, and understand how things work rather than just import libraries? Maybe there's a field that won't turn it's nose up at me because I'm closing in hard on 40? I don't know, I enjoyed when I took geology in college a bazillion years ago... is it a decent way to make a living?
I took some EE classes for fun this spring, it was "fine" and I did well, but I also felt like it wasn't pointing anywhere other than the direction I'm kind of already going. It was "cool" - but also, I don't particularly see myself being happy being an EE for a living, and hilariously, like 9/10 of those guys seem to just be writing code for a living anyway. It was fun, and I learned some stuff, but I wouldn't call it my calling.
I could probably go back and do another masters right here in town and focus on geophysics or something. There's an applied masters in geology here in Anchorage and it probably could pipeline me into a job (or eventual consulting) in oil and gas here. That wouldn't be bad at all, but I don't know much about the career. Do people get to actually do math in this field? Or is it like every other one where we just call a python library to do it for us? Even if it is, is it fun? Do you guys get to solve real problems? Do you get to get outdoors and explore? I would love to have something where I could go see more of the world? Is it a crowded field - one thing that was nice about bush aviation was that not a lot of people wanted to do it.
And for the work, is it quantitative and practical? I actually like doing math, I'd love to learn a lot more chemistry, and I think remote sensing stuff and various sensors are fun to work with / around. What's life like for exploratory geophysics people? I speak a few other languages, and when my kids are done with school (not that far away) would love to blast out into the world and go explore some more.
I miss exploring the world and I did a lot of flying for mines and even the oil fields for awhile, it'd be cool to try something new. But I'm not sure what it'd even be like?
Anyway, I know this is a lot, but I'm looking for something, and I just never thought about geology until it just kind of percolated up in my mind this morning on a walk.
Thanks.