I did office work (business manager) for 36 years. Never loved it, never hated it - it put food on the table & provided a fairly nice retirement. Working for most of my life put my brain into work-mode and being retired is...hard. OK, no eye rolling please, Your world becomes smaller and society is really geared for working people IMO. I've done volunteer work and will continue but I'm looking for something for the next half of my life. I'm 58 years young & figure I could work for another 20 years easily. Thought about really delving into personal training but I DO have arthritis and I'm not sure I could keep it up for 20 years. Ditto on teaching spinning. More than 3 classes/week hurts my back (stenosis in spine.)

Some kind of social work or nursing has always called me. Nursing school is extremely competitive and frankly, I think my age is a detriment. I started social work school but had to take a pause. The teaching/helping professions have always interested me. But again, my feeling is that my age is going to hold me back from entering a competitive school market. I know they aren't supposed to do that but it IS done. OTOH, I'm also a really good dog trainer because I can communicate with most dogs easily. It is weird, but I have an innate ability to figure out where their confusion is and work through it (sounds like I'm bragging but I don't mean to - just want to explain where I'm at.)

I could go back to my old place (at a University) part time where the money would be good & the job would be stable but a good friend said that would be stepping backwards. Yet, I think it would be different because (1) I would go part time and (2) I'd have no golden handcuffs - my continued employment would not affect my retirement. They would pick up my health insurance and that alone is worth $350/month. Another thing is that we can really use some extra cash because my pension has not increased, nor is it going to anytime soon but prices continue to climb. So, I hate to invest in a lot of schooling just to find out that a career isn't what I thought it was.

SO - my question: Has anybody ever made a dramatic career change and how did you decide what to do? What were your obstacles? Was it worth it?