In switch, helping was the bottom line

Each month "Transitions" profiles an individual who has made significant changes in his or her work life and highlights the techniques used to make the changes.

When two of his three children completed high school and left home, Richard Joyce finally had time to reflect on his working life.

For 22 years, Joyce had been an outside sales representative for Danvers Industrial Packaging, which distributes corrugated cartons, foam, bubble pack, and other items to manufacturing firms.

"It was a wonderful company, great people, a family business," Joyce said.

But when the downturn in the economy hit in 2000, "my income dropped substantially," said Joyce, who had been working on commission all those years. He was also feeling burned out.

"When raising a family, you don't have time to think about yourself," Joyce said. "Being a father and raising kids is the most meaningful thing I have done in my life. But it was time to think about myself. I was not feeling fulfilled, and I needed to know what would make me happy."

A journalism major at Boston University, Joyce had started his career in the mid-1970s working for papers on the North Shore and in Maine. "I enjoyed writing at the time," he said, "and I didn't like science and math. So I went into journalism."

Married in 1977, his first child was born early the next year. But he soon felt that the demands of his job and the needs of his young family were incompatible.

"The long hours and very low pay were a tremendous stress on my new family and marriage," Joyce recalled. He decided he would need higher pay and more predictable hours.

Through an acquaintance he found an opening at the packaging firm, which was attracted by his communications skills and confident that he could do the job.

For over two decades his fortunes grew with the company's. His territory, northeastern Massachusetts and southern Maine and New Hampshire, allowed him to stay close to his family.

"I was home every night and every weekend," Joyce recalled.

But after 20-plus years he knew it was time for a change. Joyce knew he had to keep working, but he needed time to sort things through. He left Danvers Industrial Packaging and took another sales position, but within three months he was gone.

"Sales is a young man's game," said Joyce. "The older you get, the harder it is to get your mojo up every day."

He took a part-time job as a limo driver "to stay busy and keep up the income stream." The limo job also gave him time to think.

Joyce characterizes this two- to three-year period as when he "floated around" and did "soul searching."

"There had always been something missing, at the back of my mind," Joyce said. "I believe that we have a responsibility to leave the world a better place than we found it, and I had never felt fulfilled."

So he kept on searching. Throughout the process his wife was supportive. "Frustrated, but supportive," Joyce recalled.

Through her, a lifelong nurse, he met many others who work in healthcare. Joyce said he admired their attitude toward life, and that they served others in need.

"They realize how fragile life is," he said. "They are spontaneous and live for the moment and don't sweat the little things."

Joyce started exploring healthcare career opportunities, reading the newspaper recruitment listings and scanning job boards and company websites. He made several applications through websites but had no responses.

Then an ad for an in-home patient care technician caught his attention. He applied and, three interviews later, was hired.

The firm, Life Plus, was acquired soon after by Apria Healthcare, which has over 500 outlets and 12,000 employees.

As a patient service technician, Joyce goes to people's homes to install medical equipment -- oxygen tanks for people with respiratory problems, motorized beds, wheelchairs, and enteral pumps for the stomach -- and train recipients on how to use them.

The work is demanding, but Joyce said he is in good shape from a lifetime of working out. He also had to get a "hazmat" endorsement on his license in order to transport the oxygen, some of which is stored in liquid form at 212 degrees below zero.

Now Joyce feels he is in the right place doing the right thing. "This job has been like an epiphany to me. I have never been happier. I really enjoy what I do."

At his peak in the mid-1990s Joyce earned six figures annually, "more than I ever dreamed I would make." Now he makes about half what he did, but he said, "I don't even think about it." His wife still works as an licensed practical nurse, and "with two incomes we are fine," he added.

"You just need to make adjustments in your life," he said. "And once you are happy, that makes the people around you happier, too."

If you have a career transition story you would be willing to share, send e-mail to transitions@bostonworks.com. Please include your name, phone number, and a brief description of your change.