What a 70-Year-Old First-Time Novelist Taught Me About Career Change

When people talk about reinvention, they often talk about it like it’s a dramatic movie scene.

A person quits the job, sells the house, moves across the country, starts a business. And by the end of the montage, they’ve become a whole new person.

But in real life, it rarely looks—or feels—that simple.

Real reinvention is slower, messier and way less cinematic.

Sometimes it starts because life nudges you. Sometimes it starts because life pushes you. And sometimes, you don’t even realize you’re reinventing yourself until you look back and see the trail you’ve already made.

That’s one of the things that stood out to me in a recent podcast conversation I had with author Rick Steeby.

Rick has lived several lives in one. He served in the military. Worked security on the Alaska pipeline. Spent more than a decade with the Anchorage Police Department. Earned a college degree just before turning 50. Worked in IT. Started a handyman business. And later, after writing 13 manuscripts, published his first novel in his early 70s.

If you laid all of that out on paper, it might look scattered to some people. But to me, it looks like something else.

It looks like reinvention.

And not the kind that starts from scratch. The kind that keeps building on what came before.

You're Not Starting Over. You're Starting From.

Here's the thing: most people approach career change like it's a demolition project. Tear it down to the studs. Clear the lot. Start again from zero.

And that framing costs them. A lot.

Why? Because it treats everything you've already built — your experience, your instincts, your hard-won judgment — as something to move away from rather than something to move forward with.

Rick never framed it that way. When his IT company gave him an ultimatum — move to Chicago or find something else — he found something else. When years of physical work started breaking down his body, he found something else. When 12 manuscripts didn't land a publishing deal, he wrote a 13th.

At every transition, he asked the same essential question: Given where I am right now — what comes next?

Not, how do I get back to what I had?

Not, how do I prove this disruption didn't affect me?

Just: What now? What fits now? What wants to grow from here?

When I asked Rick about working his way through all of those transitions, he said:

"I never feared being out of work. It was just a question of what I was going to do next."

Think about it: he wasn't fearless because nothing scared him. He was fearless because he didn’t tie his identity to a single career. The job could end. The chapter could close. But Rick — his skills, his curiosity, his ability to figure things out — was still there on the other side of it.

That's the reframe. And it can change everything about how you navigate what's ahead.

When Life Forces the Pivot

I want to point out something that doesn't get said enough when we talk about reinvention.

Sometimes you don't choose it. Sometimes the choice gets made for you.

Rick's handyman business didn't end because he lost interest. His other hip gave out. His mom called to tell him she had pancreatic cancer. The slow season hit. The pieces stopped working at the same time, in the same window, and the chapter simply couldn't continue.

That's real. And it can feel unfair, and disorienting. It can feel like a loss — because it is one.

But here's what I want you to know: a forced ending closes a chapter. It doesn't close the book.

Rick didn't spend his energy trying to reconstruct what was gone. He turned toward what was still available — including 12 unfinished manuscripts sitting on his hard drive.

Maybe you're in a season right now where something has been taken from you, or slowly stopped fitting, or quietly stopped working. I'd encourage you to consider: what's still available to you? What have you been carrying all along that you haven't fully used yet?

Rick said something else that stuck with me: he pointed out that his own father stayed in one career his entire life — a mindset shaped by growing up during the Depression. But Rick observed that most people today don't stay in a single career for more than a decade at a stretch.

Expect multiple chapters. Plan for them. And stay open to the unexpected ones — because some of Rick's best turned up when he wasn't looking for them at all.

Your Experience Is the Material

When Rick's novel, “Gold Miner’s Daughter,” finally came together, it drew on everything: Alaska in the 1960s — a place and era he knows from the inside. Law enforcement instincts built over a decade in Anchorage. Real people from his real life. A protagonist shaped by experiences Rick himself had lived.

He didn't write around his past. He wrote from it.

Here's the connection to your career: that same principle applies to wherever you're heading next. The years you've accumulated aren't a liability because your industry has shifted or your role has changed. They're a lens. A set of pattern recognitions. A collection of problems you've already solved.

That transfers, though not in a straight line. But it transfers more than you think.

You're not starting over. You're starting from everything you've already become.

What would change for you if you believed that — actually believed it — about your own career? Let me know in the comments.

I’m Richard Taliaferro. I’m a certified career coach specializing in helping mid-stage professionals gain clarity on their career journey. I’ve written a guide on how to escape the work hamster wheel. Click here to download yours.