<p>mom2boys, that sounds like a good plan - to get your house and finances ready and to at least downsize. But the thing that I see lacking (forgive me if I’m wrong) in your post is an excitement or happiness about making this change. The change is for YOU so be sure that YOU are up for the challenge and that it will be one that you look forward to - even if with some fears of the unknown.</p>
<p>My grandmother always said, “Make sure you are moving towards something and not away from something else.”</p>
<p>I’m sad she has dementia. She certainly re-invented herself and her life several times, and very productively, including 20 years as a widow with a Vespa before Vespas were “cool.” :D</p>
<p>She’d like this thread.</p>
<p>Mimk- hot yoga = Bikram, done in a hot room, like 90F+ and the theory is that your muscles stretch much better in that warm room and you sweat out lots of impurities.</p>
<p>You definitely sweat, I liked it during the class, but with low BP & vertigo, the heat was too much for me, I felt sick after every class, if you can handle the heat, it is amazing</p>
<p>re Momlove #30
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<p>I want to add: luck. I kind of did just that (maybe not my DREAM career, but a NEW career) at age 52. Yes, I had the skills. I was hired for a very specific, narrow skill. Less than a year later I was promoted to manager and then to director. If the opportunity had not presented itself in the context of my small company, I would still be the employee using the one, narrow skill.</p>
<p>So, yes, I am (more than) capable of performing my job. But luck played a significant part in providing the opportunity to demonstrate that.</p>
<p>This is not heartening to many, I am sure, because luck is so capricious. But this is my experience.</p>
<p>mafool - you may have been lucky – but you also made your luck. You had skills. </p>
<p>Luck is more forthcoming to those who are prepared.</p>
<p>Wow, mafool, I was about to respond to momlove with the proviso that I wasn’t really sure that such a change could happen if getting to a new dream career required being hired by someone else (and perhaps someone 20 years younger?), but you did it!</p>
<p>I will say that in my own experience in a creative field that can be pursued more or less solo (only requiring that someone at the finish line actually buy the product), it is doable. My dream field was something I had deferred and picked at for decades, didn’t start taking seriously until a health crisis got me thinking about what I wanted my path to be when I was in my '40’s, and there was no real success until I was, well, not in my '40’s. And that success, although I’m very proud of if and loved what I was doing, did not involve the kind of larger and more complex projects I had envisioned myself executing since childhood. </p>
<p>So, when the last kid was out of the house and there was no good reason/ no insurmountable time constraints/no other more pressing obligations/ not to do it – beyond the possibility that I wasn’t capable of doing it – I did it. It was a bit unsettling to actually be working on what I had, in my heart, always felt I was meant to do. The process was far more arduous than I had anticipated, more time consuming, more challenging, more difficult both artistically and emotionally. And I really don’t know that I could have done it with my children still at home because I needed to sit with it for 18 hours at a time some days and my poor husband ate a lot of take out. But here I am, two and a half years into it, and it works. </p>
<p>I don’t know what I would think if I hadn’t achieved at least a preliminary level of success within the first couple of years, but I like to think that I got enough out of the process and out of creating the product that I’d still be at it. What if at the end of the day I had thought that what I’d made was objectively dreadful? But the thing is, it wasn’t. It isn’t. </p>
<p>I say go for it.</p>
<p>CCSurfer, what kind of work do you do? Great story.</p>
<p>Abasket, I didn’t mean to be mysterious. I’m a writer.</p>
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<p>Very inspiring, CCSurfer. Any tips on how you made this work for you? How do you go from the multi-tasking most of us have to do daily just to get by (especially when raising kids) to focusing that hard on making your dream come true?</p>
<p>I have a acquaintance who has published two novels (with a fair amount of success, btw) and she said she basically had to stop worrying about taking care of the household (including dinners) and just focus on her writing. She said her husband and child were understanding but it was still pretty difficult to do.</p>
<p>I’ve noticed over the years that a lot of successful people (both famous and those I meet in every day real life) are hyper-focused on what they are doing. They seem to eat, breathe and sleep their work. How do you make that switch when it is not how you typically function?</p>