I did exactly that when my children were grown. My old career was spent in front of a computer, by myself, with stacks of demanding paper all around me. Even when my children were adults, I kept plodding along in the same rut.
One day, I was explaining to someone how great my life was, and I stopped dead in my tracks. It was such a lie. Behind my Pollyana-ish attitude, I knew that I wanted a completely different life.
The next day, I listed my house for sale, and one month later I was on the road, heading north in my new motorhome. My vague plan was to get to the country in northern California and see what I could do there.
The events that followed were serendipitous. First, I took some volunteer work at a children's afterschool center and signed in at the county employment office. A career counselor there got to talking to me, and asked me, "What do you really want to do?" I answered her, based on my past position, but she repeated the question and asked me to come back the next week with an answer.
All week I pondered the question, and the next week, I returned with... exactly one thing on my list, and I lacked the education to do that thing. The counselor led me to a nearby school, of which the director of the afterschool program happened to be one of the admissions officers. I completed the 13-month course of study, so in just over a year, I was launched on my current career.
It's been important for me to realize that even the perfect career can have a rocky start, but its ups and downs are easier to take when you know you are pursuing your dream. Remembering that I was low man on the totem pole, I often had to look ahead to resolve beginner's problems.
There would be no way I could name a career for another person - that is something each person carries in their own identity. I would advise to let go of the old to make way for the new, and then I'd make up some corny analogy that sounds like a wise old saying.
"The spring flowers do not emerge until the snow has melted away." - author unknown.
