I Chose Uncertainty Over Misery

A few years after I got my undergrad degree in accounting, I had an uncomfortable realization: I didn’t like accounting. At all. I was pretty good at it. I could crunch the numbers, make the reports, balance the budgets. But something about it felt deeply misaligned (and depressingly boring). The thought of doing it for another 10, 20, 30 years made me nauseous. So I started asking myself some hard questions.

What do I actually want to be doing?

Can I make a change without setting my life on fire?

How do I take a risk without losing everything?

Can I trust myself to figure it out as I go?

That questioning phase led me into project management. I started learning. I found ways to make myself useful in adjacent roles. I earned a couple certifications. And along the way, I got a front-row seat to some of the politics and posturing that can come with certain leadership roles. I worked with some project managers who were, frankly, jerks (and that’s putting it kindly). Some doubted my ability to make the leap. Others offered unsolicited advice laced with judgment. It rattled me. And for a while, I let that doubt settle in. Maybe I was making a mistake. Maybe I should just go back to what was safe.

But I didn’t do that. Instead, I opened my first small business.

The first year was rough. I made mistakes. I second-guessed everything. I had to unlearn some of the rigid templates I’d absorbed about how "successful" people operate. I started applying project management principles in ways that worked for me. Even if those ways didn’t always look neat or textbook perfect. And it (mostly) worked.

The truth is that a career pivot often comes with ego bruises. People will doubt you. You will doubt you. Some days will feel like a series of mistakes. But here’s something I learned: if your day-to-day feels like a grind of pretending to care, it’s okay to outgrow your original plan.

Let me say that again, just in case you need it today: It is okay to outgrow your original plan.

Here are a few lessons I wish someone had told me earlier:

You don't need everyone's approval. The loudest skeptics are usually projecting their own fears. You don’t owe anyone a perfect explanation for why you’re changing course. Keep going.

It’s okay if your path looks nonlinear. That’s not failure. That’s growth. It means you're alive and learning. And really, do we even live in a world where one career for life makes sense?

You can take what you’ve learned and apply it in new ways. No experience is wasted. Every pivot, detour, and misstep carries insight. Accounting gave me structure. Project management gave me strategy. I used both to build something that felt like me.

You’re allowed to change your mind. You’re not a failure for evolving. You don’t have to keep doing something just because you spent time or money on it. You don’t have to stay stuck in a box just because you spent years decorating it.

If you're wasting away in a job that no longer fits, you need to know: you are not trapped. The first steps might be clumsy. Some people might not understand. But that doesn’t mean you're wrong to want something more. Or to need something more.

You are allowed to evolve. It is okay to experiment. You can build a life and a career that actually feels like you.

Sometimes the clearest path forward is the one with no map at all.

Thanks for spending a few minutes with me. I’m glad you’re here.

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