Hi Hyacinth,

I have a blog where i post interviews with people about their careers and transitions. I have several related to mid-career changes & have posted the transcripts - please check it out at avocationist.com

Thank you. I will take a look. What made you start that?

Hyacinth, I think you're missing the point of TBD forums. The idea is for us users to develop content here in the discussion board. And so, I won't send you an email of 200 words or less -- feels like I'm doing your work for you. I think it would be more helpful to tell some of my story here...you can always cut and paste what you want from it. Besides, I can slip in my own plug, like Mr. or Ms. Avocationist. I'm starting a new Website for people over 50 with just this sort of focus, among others. See my profile...since TBD's rules preclude plugging your own URL in posts. Ooops. Sorry, Mr. Av.

I found myself out of acceptable options in the US commercial radio station business after 14 years in the mid-70s, and didn't want to make a second geographic move in two years. So, I changed careers and started my own advertising business with two partners. It was exhilarating, joyful, frustrating, agonizing, not terribly profitable. But educational and growth-inducing. I morphed into a freelance writer, then a copywriter for a medical instrument company for a year, then hired on as a marketing manager for a radio station programming syndicator. Eight years later, in 2003, I "retired." Now I'm reinventing a new combination of work -- on my own again -- family life: full-time husband, grandfather. Moved to a smaller town. None of these career changes have been easy or smooth. I can't say it always felt like the right move. I'm not rich yet. I have discovered that the conventional American "dream," getting rich, is not necessary to feel, and be, useful, fulfilled, yet unsatisfied. You can be comfortably well off no matter how little you have in the bank. Notice, I haven't tried to anything too far from my core talents -- except maybe management. Your career change doesn't have to be, like, from accountant to opera singer, to be challenging. That one could work, of course. Or vice versa. Though I don't know of many divas who long to keep books. You get my drift.

Oh, no - I have not missed the point.

The purpose of asking is so that I get your permission and not just read what you say and use it. Do you get the point? Thanks for responding anyway. If others feel like you do, I would certainly like to hear from them and get their story too. It's highly motivational. Thanks again.

Common Dave give a little.It wont hurt..

Yeah, Thorn. You're right. Sorry to be grumpy. I did tell my story, though.

Dave, first, you have to define career. To me, career is the sum total of my life's work accomplishments and it matters not whether I accomplished it from behind a lunch counter or across a therapy divide.

If I put down only those tasks for which I was paid by someone the list would include:

Therapist, author, retail store owner, real estate for rent owner, actor, editor, Associate Professor of Psychology, cab driver, camp counselor, sandwich man, delivery boy, drug store clerk, advertising copywriter, educational consultant, professional speaker, photographer, substitute teacher, social worker, salesman, ice cream truck driver, seminar leader.

I have not yet tried killer for hire or politician and I am not certain which of those would be more embarrassing to me.

Work is both a means of creating a pool of money to accomplish non-working goals like eating and sleeping and creative outlets for accumulated abilities and interests.

Every job I ever had, every business I ever owned and every avocation I earned even a pittance from - like photography - added to the sum-total of the me that exists today. I never could have had the success I attained as a therapist without all the other endeavors that preceeded and accompanied it. Without the therapist role, I never would have succeeded at real estate or retail sales. And had my granddaughter not been a target of magazines all over the world, I never would have been paid for photographs of her I took at her shows and at home as a loving and proud grandfather. My photos have appeareded in publications in the USA, Britain, France, Russia, Sweden, Japan and South American countries too numerous to mention. Becasue of my familial relationship to the subject, I requested that there be no public attribution of them. I can be lkooked up in a phone book and I didn't want fan calls that are for her, not me or requests for interviews. The payments were relative tokens but I saved the checks and made a collage of them. So kill me, I "lost" a couple of hundred bucks! But I paid more than that for some wall hangings that had far less significance.

That summary doesn't even begin to mention my wife's accomplishments and how they have added to the sum total of my life.