At age 57 I decided I didn’t want to work in an office anymore; I had worked in an office for most of my adult life out of necessity as so many do (not thinking during those years that there may be other ways of working/or living arrangements that might have enabled me to work at jobs I loved earlier in my life). I was at this time working as the lead secretary (as the position was called) to the president of an engineering firm who was a genius in his field and a generous man, but very difficult and demanding to work with and for! I learned a lot on this job as hadn’t worked for an engineering firm previously; learning the engineering terms (it was like learning a foreign language!), editing/adding to specs, spread sheets, proposals, etc., was very difficult at first, but I became good at it and when the main secretary to the president of the firm retired I stepped into her role. At the end, I was making $60,000 a year (which back then was a very good salary) with the very generous bonus’ and Christmas gifts given to the employees, but I wasn’t happy. After many years on this job, my creative side very much wanted to come out and at age 57 I gave a month’s notice and gave up my lucrative job to take a risk and teach dance classes to seniors and kids! I had spent my life dancing and performing so this was not coming out of nowhere – I had a background in dance. The office manager and the comptroller (whom I was friends with and had gone out with at times to clubs in Manhattan) no doubt thought I was a bit mad to give up a lucrative position for this risky venture; but when the calls kept coming in from senior centers and other senior facilities and also some nursery schools and day care centers for kids, they saw that there was a positive response to the mailings I had previously sent out. So for several years I taught dance and supplemented my income at times with additional part-time jobs. But at least part of the time I was able to work at something I loved doing. Then along came my first grandchild and I became a nanny for a number of years, delighting in this job! I went back to teaching the dance classes after being nanny for about 3 years, when my grandchild went to nursery school. I’m in my senior years and I’m still enjoying teaching dance classes at senior centers!