I went back to grad school 8 years ago to make a career change, and even though right now my employment prospects are not great, I'm glad I did. I'm lucky in that DH has been very supportive of me.

My advice, if you are looking to follow your passion to the fitness industry, is to research the business side of the kind of environment you are looking to work in. There's anything big corporate gym to small biz studio. Every dream career has a nuts-and-bolts business side to it. There are people who know how to run a good business, provide good services and treat their employees well, and there are those who only know how to do one or two of those three things.

For example, if you were to become a personal trainer working at a large facility, are you an employee of that facilty or are you a contractor? How is compensation structured? Do you get benefits? Are you responsible for developing your own clientele? Would you be in an environment where you are encouraged to continue to learn and improve your knowledge so as to provide your clients the best possible service? Is the culture of the place collaborative or competitive? Do you have a preference?

On the other hand, if you were to become your own boss and open a yoga studio, what would that look like? What would your overhead costs be and how many classes with how many students would you need to teach per week in order to make it work? What happens as your business grows?

Getting a sense of how these businesses are run might help you figure out if you will be happy working in these environments.