I am 40-years-old and I’m not sure what I want to be when I grow up. For the last fourteen years, I have worked in residential mortgage: sales, operations, and management (with some dabbling in underwriting). Mortgage is not exactly a childhood dream career. I’ve yet to meet a child whose vision board holds amortization schedules, income calculations, and credit utilization formulas. And yet, it captured my interest for a long time.

Mortgage is a challenging industry. In addition to ensuring you meet all corporate and regulatory practices and laws, you must also meet your clients’ needs. Finances are a stress point for so many people and a home is typically an individual or family’s largest purchase. Layer that with ‘domino deals’ (one sale ensures/is required for the next person’s purchase/sale), home costs and interest rates outpacing many people’s ability to buy, limited inventory, and the ability of the average consumer to comparison shop to the bitter end of a transaction – and it is downright HARD to do a mortgage.

The challenges though have helped make me the calm, capable, problem solver I am today. I believe my value is not in being able to calculate LTV (loan to value) or DTI (debt to income) and instead lies in my ability to quickly assess competing priorities, distill complex problems, recognize and influence the motivations and behaviors of others, and find creative solutions. In the Washington, DC area, so often people equate what they do with who they are. It has never suited me well (although I accept those who connect with that type of identity statement) but deciding to leave mortgage gave me an opportunity to reflect on all of this.

So while I started this musing stating I’m not sure I want to be when I grow up, I have some ideas. I want to be a person who takes on challenges. A person who overcomes nervous excitement to pursue opportunities. A person who makes others feel special, seen, and understood. A person who learns new sports (or instruments or languages or all of the above). A person who takes occasional naps and appreciates beautiful sunsets and vistas. I want to be a person who takes the lessons, skills, and experiences from fourteen years of mortgage into my new job tomorrow morning in a new (to me) industry. A person who excitedly packed western attire and is wearing my cowboy hat on the Amtrak train to DC because her new job has a themed Thursday once a month.

I find writing cathartic. So if you’ve stayed with me so far, thank you for reading. Perhaps something will resonate with you too. If you figure out what you’d like to be when you grow up, I’d love to hear about it!