Hi All, I've been thinking about changing careers for the past 10 years. I turn 43 next week and I’d like to go back to school, get an engineering degree, and enter the rehabilitation engineering profession. I want put my energy into something that will make a concrete difference in the lives of others. I’d like to use my talents to help others achieve more than they thought possible in their own lives.
Fear and my perception of the challenges seem so monumental that they've frozen any real progress for literally years. I'm afraid of failing. I’m afraid of succeeding and it not being what I imagined it would be. How am I going to pay for school? Is it smart to take out loans? It is the right thing to do to leave a profession that I've been successful in for the last 20 years to follow a dream. Is that the responsible thing to do? Am I being selfish?
The truth is that I don’t know and I’m not actually sure what I’m going to do. I’m not sharing this to tell you that I have all the answers and tell you how to live your life. I’m not sharing this to ask for help in figuring out my life. I’m sharing this because I believe the desire to do more with your life, to make an impact beyond yourself, is part of the human condition shared by all of us.
I share this to let you know that you are not alone.
Just as I've read the stories of others who are much older than me changing their lives, many with many more challenges then I face, allow me to at least see the possible where I fear it may be impossible, maybe you would read this and see some hope in achieving your own dreams.
Maybe together we can figure this out.
I've always loved the poem, "If" by Rudyard Kipling and I've thought about the words often as I've gone through my life. I especially like the lines:
If you can fill the unforgiving minute With sixty seconds' worth of distance run, Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it, And---which is more---you'll be a Man, my son!
I don't know what tomorrow will bring but tonight I feel like running ... 60 seconds on the clock ... who's with me.
Warmest Regards,
John
[email protected]
Brooksville, KY, USA