I didn’t wake up one day and decide to reinvent myself. That’s not how it happened. What actually happened was slower and quieter than that — a gradual awareness that the life I was living had been built mostly by accumulation rather than intention.
I’d moved through a career in accounting and finance the way a lot of people move through careers: one reasonable next step at a time. Each decision made sense in the moment. Taken together, they’d built something solid, respectable, and — if I’m being honest — not quite mine anymore.
I wasn’t miserable. That’s the part that makes this harder to talk about, because misery would have been a clearer signal. I was fine. Competent. Stable. But at some point I started noticing a gap between the life I had and the life I wanted to be living, and I didn’t have a name for it yet. I just knew it was there.
The Month Before I Signed Up
There was a stretch before I finally signed up when I knew something had to change but hadn’t done anything about it yet. I was going through the motions at work. Tom and I would talk about it in circles: I knew I wanted something different, but I didn’t know exactly what that was.
The idea of going back to school had been in the background for a while. Radiologic technology was a complete pivot — a clinical program, starting over in my 50s in a field I’d never worked in.
Every time I seriously considered it, the reasons not to do it lined up immediately. The time. The cost. Being the oldest person in the program. Whether starting an entirely new career at that point in my life was practical at all.
Eventually I realized that not deciding was still a decision. I could keep doing what I was doing, or I could find out what happened if I tried.
What I Got Wrong About Reinvention
I used to think career reinvention required certainty. That before you made a big change, you’d know exactly what you wanted and be reasonably sure it was going to work.
I wasn’t.
I knew I didn’t want to keep doing what I’d been doing. And I kept coming back to radiologic technology.
That was enough to make the first decision. It didn’t have to answer every question about the rest of my life.
Going back to school at 54 was not a smooth experience. There were clinical days that humbled me completely. Moments of genuine doubt about whether I’d made a serious miscalculation. Semesters where I counted the days not because I was excited for what came next but because I needed to get through what was in front of me.
And gradually, I got better. The work started to feel like mine.
I graduated. I work in the field now. And something I didn’t expect happened: doing something that hard and unfamiliar changed what I believed I was capable of doing next.
What I’d Tell the Person in That Month Before
What I’d tell myself isn’t that everything was going to work out. I couldn’t have known that.
And I wouldn’t say the fear would disappear.
I’d say that the gap I was noticing between the life I had and the life I wanted was worth paying attention to.
It didn’t mean my life was bad. It didn’t mean I should blow everything up. It meant something wasn’t fitting anymore.
You don’t have to hate your life before you’re allowed to change something about it.
Going back to school was my answer.
Yours might be much smaller.
But I think the question is worth asking:
If you were choosing the path you’re on today, would you choose it again?
I’m glad I finally stopped long enough to answer honestly.
Every Friday, one thing we noticed, tried, or figured out — plus one small way to approach the week differently.