| 🌿 The Sweet Spot |
Vol. 1 · Issue 015
Monday, September 28, 2026 |
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| Pivot With Purpose · Career strategy · Macro clarity · MyrtusHQ Career Signal · The Makers |
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This week in The Sweet Spot
What Do You
Like to Build?
Sometimes the thing you build with your hands when nobody is paying you is telling you something about the work you might love. The country is building again. Maybe this is a good time to remember whether you like building too.
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This week's compass
Your hobby does not have to become your job. But the reason you enjoy tinkering may be telling you something about how your brain likes to work.
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Section 01
The Makers May Have Their Moment
What did you like doing before anybody told you what counted as a career?
Think back. Did you build things? Take things apart? Fix bicycles? Make model airplanes? Build elaborate LEGO cities? Sew clothes? Work on cars? Make furniture? Grow things? Wire speakers together? Spend hours figuring out why something stopped working?
Somewhere along the way, we tend to divide our lives neatly: this is work and this is a hobby. Sometimes that distinction makes perfect sense, sometimes the best thing about a hobby is precisely that nobody is paying you to do it. But there is another question worth asking: what if the reason you enjoy tinkering is telling you something about how your brain likes to work?
For a long time, much of the career conversation has centered on knowledge work, such as degrees, software, professional services, digital transformation. All of those still matter. But look at what is being announced around us.
On September 28, Mesabi Metallics announced plans for a roughly $15 billion steel plant in Iowa. The White House says the project is expected to support roughly 5,000–6,000 construction jobs and 1,750 permanent jobs, with first steel production targeted for 2030, using iron ore from Mesabi's Minnesota operation to create a domestic mine-to-steel supply chain. That is one project but then look underneath a steel plant. Someone has to build the electrical systems, install the machinery, maintain it, automate it, weld, machine, fabricate, inspect, test, design, move material, manage water, run controls, secure industrial systems and repair equipment when something stops working at 2:00 in the morning and around that plant will be contractors, suppliers, equipment companies, logistics providers, engineering firms and small manufacturers doing thousands of things that will never appear in the headline.
The hobby and the career do not have to become the same thing, but the hobby may contain clues.
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Section 02
The Signal From Sturnella
The money is moving into things you can touch.
SIGNAL 01 · CAPACITY IS THE THEME
Physical, processing, manufacturing, infrastructure.
Last week's Sturnella Signals had one recurring theme: capacity. The critical-minerals story is no longer simply find the deposit. Increasingly, it is recover, concentrate, separate, refine, manufacture. Capital is moving farther down the chain into the processes that turn raw material into something usable.
SIGNAL 02 · THE ECOSYSTEM UNDERNEATH
A federal award reaches the companies that build, equip and maintain the project.
The same thing is happening in defense infrastructure. A federal award may go to a city, county, utility or public entity, but the work eventually reaches the companies that engineer, construct, equip, inspect, secure and maintain it. For years, we told people to learn how to work with information. Now it may also be worth asking: do you like making things work in the physical world? Because rebuilding processing, manufacturing and infrastructure capacity requires people who do.
Tinkering is data. It tells you something about how you like solving problems.
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Section 03
Tinkering Is Data
You don't have to start over. You may just need to translate.
Not everyone who likes working with their hands needs to become a machinist. That misses the point. Tinkering tells you something about how you like solving problems. Maybe you like starting with a pile of parts and figuring out how they fit together. Maybe you like troubleshooting, or precision, or machines. Maybe you need to see the physical result of your work at the end of the day. Maybe you love asking: "What happens if I try this?"
Those preferences can point toward careers in engineering, advanced manufacturing, robotics, electronics, industrial maintenance, welding, machining, automation, field service, instrumentation, construction, process technology, mining, aerospace, energy or dozens of adjacent areas and you don't necessarily have to start over. A project manager who loves hardware may belong in advanced manufacturing. A cybersecurity professional who loves machinery may belong in operational technology. A finance professional fascinated by how things are made may belong around industrial companies. A software engineer who likes robots may find a completely different path through autonomy. A person who spends every weekend rebuilding cars may know far more about systems thinking than their résumé currently suggests.
We spend a lot of time asking people what they are qualified to do. Sometimes a more interesting question is: what have you always been naturally drawn to make?
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Section 04
The 1-Pomodoro Career Map
Don't begin with a job title. Begin with something you liked to make.
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Remember what you built. Think about yourself as a kid. What could keep you occupied for hours? LEGO, model kits, woodworking, drawing structures, taking electronics apart, helping someone work on a car, building computers? Write down three things you genuinely enjoyed making, fixing, assembling or figuring out, then ask: what did I actually enjoy about it? Precision? Problem-solving? Experimentation? Seeing the finished object? That is the useful part. |
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Find today's version. Take one interest and ask what its grown-up industrial equivalent looks like. Loved complicated LEGO structures? Maybe systems, construction, engineering or assembly. Loved taking electronics apart? Controls, instrumentation or robotics. Loved engines? Advanced manufacturing, heavy equipment, aerospace, mining or energy. Don't translate the activity literally translate the kind of problem-solving you enjoyed. |
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Trace where things are being built. Add funding + geography. Look at announcements in your state and surrounding states: new plants, mines, processing facilities, data centers, defense installations, semiconductor facilities, battery plants, infrastructure projects, utilities, aerospace manufacturing. The headline says steel plant. Your career map should ask: what ecosystem has to appear around it? |
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Search the ecosystem, not the company. Choose one major project. Then search for the work that surrounds it: maintenance technician, controls engineer, electrician, welder, machinist, industrial cybersecurity, process engineer, instrumentation, quality assurance, supply chain, project manager, environmental engineering, water systems, automation, operations. You are learning how many different people it takes to make one physical operation work. |
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Find your gap. Compare those jobs with what you already know. Where is the smallest bridge? Maybe a certification, a community-college course, PLC fundamentals, CAD, welding, electronics, an introductory robotics course, industrial cybersecurity or maybe you just need to meet someone who already does the work and ask what the job is actually like. Choose one bridge. That is enough for this week. |
The country is building again and maybe this is a good time to remember what you liked building too.
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Section 05
AI That Helps
Take what you like to build and expand the map.
Start with what you uncovered in the Pomodoro:
"These are things I genuinely enjoy building, fixing or working with: [list them]. What do these activities suggest about the kinds of problems I may naturally enjoy solving?"
Then give it your current career:
"I currently work in [field]. Show me careers or industries where my existing professional experience could overlap with that hands-on interest without requiring me to completely start over."
Then bring in geography:
"I live in [state/region]. What types of manufacturing, infrastructure, mining, energy, aerospace, defense or industrial projects are expanding around this region, and what kinds of companies typically form around those projects?"
And finally:
"Give me ten adjacent roles I probably would not think to search for."
That last question is the useful one. And don't restrict the exercise because you don't currently have the expertise. Maybe you love aircraft but cannot design an airplane, that is fine but maybe someone else designs it, someone manufactures the component, someone tests it, someone maintains it, someone supplies the material, someone manages the program, someone secures its systems, someone finances the company building it. Find that intersection that works for you.
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Section 06
Recharge
We spend an extraordinary amount of time trying to control change. Nature has absolutely no interest in doing any of that.
🍂 THE DARE: WATCH THE SEASON CHANGE
I'm writing this while sitting through a rainstorm. As we move into fall in the Northern Hemisphere, find a place where you can actually notice the season changing. Put the phone away.
Sit by a window during the rain. Listen to a storm. Watch leaves move in the wind. Notice the first tree beginning to change color. Walk somewhere covered in fallen leaves. Feel that first genuinely cool morning. No podcast. No career planning. No notes. Just notice.
Summer ends. Leaves change. Storms arrive. Then something else starts.
Sometimes recharge is simply allowing yourself to watch change happen without immediately trying to manage it.
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Your Practice
One Small Assignment
01 Write down three things you loved building or fixing when you were younger.
02 Identify what you actually enjoyed about doing them.
03 Find one major physical investment being made near your region.
04 Map ten kinds of work that will exist around it.
05 Find the smallest bridge between one of those roles and what you know today.
06 Learn one thing about it this week.
The country is building again. Remember whether you like building too.
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THE SWEET SPOT
Read the signal · Find your position · Move with purpose
myrtushq.com
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Sturnella Signals
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Myrtus
Career insights for people who want to pivot with purpose.
This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment, legal, accounting, or cybersecurity advice. Market information is time-sensitive and may change after publication.
myrtushq.com
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