He Spent 24 Years in the Wrong Job — Here's What He Did Next

Tom Miller* grew up Catholic, careful, and certain that college wasn't for him. After losing his mother to leukemia at 18, and spending that summer as her primary caregiver, he drifted into a 24-year career in commercial printing, doing skilled work that paid well and meant nothing to him.

At 40, on a vacation to Savannah, Georgia, he told his wife: I can't do this anymore. What followed was a return to college, a bachelor's in education, six years teaching in high-poverty schools in Dallas, a master's degree earned at night while teaching by day, and eventually a full-time practice as a Licensed Professional Counselor (LPC).

In this conversation, Tom reflects on what it cost him to stay too long in the wrong career, what it felt like to finally work in alignment with his values, and what he'd tell his 18-year-old self about belief, mentorship, and vocation.

He also shares the story of his son, a student with a 4.37 GPA who left college 12 credits short of graduation to become a chef, and why buying him a set of knives was one of his proudest parenting moments.

*Tom Miller is a pseudonym. Because of his work as a therapist, he did not want to use his real name. The picture for this episode is AI-generated.

🎧 Listen to “Path Found Podcast”
Real stories of pivots, side quests, and scenic routes that inspire new possibilities.

📅 New episodes drop every Thursday.

👉 Subscribe & Listen: https://www.youtube.com/@PathFoundPodcast

★ Follow, rate, and share if you’ve ever taken the scenic route.

Get Involved:
🌐 See the work we’re doing at Keystone Network - Web: https://keystonenetwork.org
💬 Submit your comments, questions for guests, or suggest new guests you’d love to hear from!
📷Instagram: @pathfoundpodcast

Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

I was on vacation. I was in Savannah, Georgia, and I was sitting there looking out over the river and going, I have complete dread and anxiety about going back to work on Monday. I don't think I can do this anymore. Working in the business world was not fulfilling. I started volunteering at community centers, food pantries, and that's where life brought me joy. And I thought, well, how could I find joy in life and do that as my business to be able to help people?

SPEAKER_00 0:23

Hi everyone and welcome to Pathfound, the podcast about the real, messy, unexpected journeys that lead us to the work we love. I'm Monica Argandonia, and every week I talk with someone whose story proves there's no single right way to build a meaningful life. You know that feeling where you're sitting on vacation, looking out over the water, and the dread of going back to work is so heavy you can barely breathe? That's exactly where today's guest found himself at 40 years old, staring out over the Savannah River, knowing something had to change. Tom spent 24 years in the printing industry. Good money, stable work, and a feeling he describes as shallow and hollow. He'd lost his mom at 18, never had a mentor, stumbled into a trade job, and just kept going until he didn't. What followed was not one career pivot but two. First into teaching, then into becoming a licensed professional counselor with a law degree possibly on the horizon. Tom is now fifty-six, sees clients daily, and says he hasn't had a bad case of the Mondays in years. This is a story about the price of staying in the wrong path and the unexpected freedom that comes from finally leaving it. This is Pathfound. I am so happy to have you here with me today. And as I start all my interviews, I'd like to just go back and ask, what were you like as a kid?

SPEAKER_01 1:47

I was actually a would we would call a good kid. I grew up in a Catholic church, coming to Catholic schools. I was an altar boy, so I've got pictures of me in my altar boy outfits, and we did our first two unions at in second grade, I believe. And everything in my family was just about being good and decent and also forgiving. I just grew up a good kid and it was very sheltered, very protected childhood. Went to an all-boys Catholic high school, which had pledges of no drinking, no drugs, and no dating. So my first official date with a girlfriend that lasted more than one night was 19 years old. So it's very counter today's culture. And no drugs or alcohol for me in my early years until the alcohol kicked in in the late teen and early 20s.

SPEAKER_00 2:36

Were you a good student?

SPEAKER_01 2:38

Oddly enough, no, not so much. I valued being cool. In my first through eighth grade Catholic school, amongst my guy friends, if you got two higher grades, you were not cool. The girls were supposed to get the high grades. And I remember looking back at some of my report cards, which I still have in the attic, and I'd get it, you know, 2.5, 2.7 GPA. And now, as I got older and I went back to college, even my high school GPA was 2.87. And I went back to college as an older adult to get a degree in teaching in education. And when I was 40, and I got a 4.0 through all the college and went back to school again to get a master's degree, and I got a 4.0 in my master's degree. So I'm like, I really am a good student, but my mindset back when I was 12 and 13 wasn't to get good grades.

SPEAKER_00 3:28

So after high school, you didn't go to college. What did you end up doing?

SPEAKER_01 3:32

I ended up going into trade school, which got me an associate of science degree in graphic communications, which meant to work either in design studios or printing companies, mostly printing companies. And I did, we were doing it analog in 88. My first job was November 7th of 1988. I remember that because it was election day when George H.W. Bush got elected. That day I started work at 7 p.m. And we were doing analog work to prepare the metal plates for the printing presses. So I started working on that. And I remember the day around 1990 when they had these guys walking in with dollies and their boxes with this fruit on the side was an Apple. And they're like, we're going to be able to do all this stuff electronically with these Apple computers. And we're like, no way, it's not going to happen. And the workforce at my company I was working at in Commerce, California had about 60 people doing the analog work. And out of that, about 10 of us stayed and did the computers. And the other 50 got frustrated and said, Hui on all these computer things, and then left. So I was trainable because I was young and open-minded. So eventually I learned how to do all of the computer things. So I spent the 90s and all the 2000s up until 2012. So 24 years in the call pre-press, which is electronic digital pre-press, working on computers and preparing files for clients and for eventually for plates for the printing press that they wrapped around those cylinders and printed everything.

SPEAKER_00 5:03

Did you like it?

SPEAKER_01 5:04

I liked it in the sense that it was a pretty easy job, pretty white collar. I got to sit in a little 70-degree office, but I always felt unfulfilled. I felt like I was a misfit. It wasn't my life's meaning and purpose. I've since, you know, as you get older, I'm 56 now, I realize having a life's meaning and purpose and having it congruent with your own identity is very helpful for mental health and for just overall life satisfaction. So I kind of felt like being in the business world and just making money and overtime and Saturdays and Sundays was rewarding in some ways financially, because we had all the stuff that we that I didn't have a lot as a kid in my childhood. So I had money, a house, cars, everything I kind of wanted and thought, well, that was it. And it proved to be unfulfilling. For a little background, a little backstory. When I was 18, I had graduated of high school. And in that senior year of high school, around February 1988, my mom got diagnosed with cancer. And the cancer was leukemia. And by June, when I graduated, she was really sick. And that summer, I took care of her. I had the opportunity, and it was the thrill of my life to be able to take care of her. So my older siblings were working. So I took care of her and she died on September 1st, about three months later. And I didn't realize until much later in life, until I was about 40, that I realized my brain was still developing at that time at 18. And my brain kind of formed to be a helper. I liked helping people. And I never connected that I could help people and get paid for it and to do that as my job. So I decided to quit the business world and go back to college where I got a bachelor's degree in education to be a teacher. So I taught for six years in mostly elementary schools. One year was kindergarten, which was a lot of fun. And it was at a school of poverty that 98% poverty and 96% Hispanic school in a part of Dallas that was needing quality educators. And I went down there to try to make a difference and to help people and to help these little five-year-olds. And part of the process at the beginning of the year was B as B and C is Cut. And then we made syllables, and then we made words, and then we made sentences, and we can write them and we can read them by the end of the year. And at the end of the year, we would do this thing where we would, when one of the students could read the whole book, they would all stand up and I would say, we'd have a little celebration that I would say, now you're a literate human being, and nobody can ever take that away. And you can read and you'll be able to read the rest of your life and how awesome that that is. And that was my favorite year of teaching. It was so much fun.

SPEAKER_00 7:45

When you left printing, what made you decide this is it? I'm not fulfilled, and I'm gonna go back to school.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

Yeah, I took a vacation. So I've since learned that vacations can be moments in our lives where we stop, pause, reflect, and think. And I was on vacation, I was in Savannah, Georgia, and I was sitting there looking out over the river and going, I have complete dread and anxiety about flying home tomorrow and going back to work on Monday. And I just talked to my wife and said, I don't think I can do this anymore. I'm working 16 hours a day, some days 18 hours and 40. I don't think I can do this for the next 30 years of my life. I gotta do it, make a change. And it was just at that moment, just sitting there, and she said, Okay, I'll help you and I'll support you in making that change. And uh it was more just the despair of just coming to the realization that this job was not for me and working in the business world was not fulfilling. And I kind of needed that fulfillment. I don't know if it was a midlife crisis or whatever you want to call it, but I needed more fulfillment in my life, and I realized I was good at helping people in my private life. I started volunteering at churches, I started volunteering at community centers, food pantries, and that's where life brought me joy. And then I thought, well, how could I find joy in life and do that as my business and to be able to help people?

SPEAKER_00 9:06

So you're 40, you're going back to college. Did you go in person? Were you online?

SPEAKER_01 9:11

In person. This is the in person.

SPEAKER_00 9:13

It had to be really hard.

SPEAKER_01 9:15

Yeah, it was really hard. I remember just I also have ADHD, so it always felt very overwhelmed. I made a couple dry runs where I tried to get in there, and then there'd be some roadblock. There'd be the academic advisor is not available today, or this person or this, or I'm missing this. I had to go all the way back from Texas to California to try to get my diploma from high school. They required a diploma and to get that took a couple months. So there's a lot of roadblocks that proved to be overwhelming at times that I was able to push through it and eventually got a hold of the right academic advisor. She held my hands through the whole process and got me enrolled, got me a lot of credits for my associate degree, and I got about 38 credits from that, which helped give me a head start on the bachelor's degree. And I just loved college though. I loved it. I did not like high school, did not like the junior college work, but I loved college. I was around a whole bunch of early 20s that were, they saw me as their father figure, and they would ask me questions. And how do you get such good grades? Well, I study. I'm not out running around parting like you guys. And they're like, it was I was kind of like their little mascot that I'd come in and be like a grounding force. I'm like, come on, join us in the study group, and we'd have study groups. And it was really kind of gave me a little burst of youthful energy too, and a lot of excitement. And I developed that love of learning and reading and studying, and college was great. I just loved it. It was the best about three years of my life there.

SPEAKER_00 10:41

What did you major in?

SPEAKER_01 10:43

It was called interdisciplinary studies, but it's just a teaching degree that's a requirement to teach in Texas.

SPEAKER_00 10:49

So when you started out, you knew you wanted to pursue teaching.

SPEAKER_01 10:52

I did. And in that class, though, in that those classes for the teaching degree, I took a psychology class. I remember it was psychology, and then the subheading was the psychol the science of mind. And like, ooh, our mind has a science to it. And uh so I started to dive really deep into psychology and how the mind works and a little bit of neurology, and I kind of fell in love with that part of it, which then after six years of teaching, well, after about four years, led me to enroll in a master's degree program to become a licensed professional counselor or a talk therapist. Because that's the job that I do now, and that's the job that I think I was meant to do from 20 years old on, but I never really found it until I was in my mid-40s, where I could be, I could help people, get paid for it, and actually enjoy going to work. I don't feel like I work any day in my life. I get up and I get to talk to people every day. I get to help people and I get paid for it. And it's congruent with my own values of helping people I think that were formulated when I was 18, helping my mom in her last months of her life.

SPEAKER_00 11:56

So you just wanted to do something different.

SPEAKER_01 11:58

Yeah. And the talk therapy is now my third official profession, different profession with third degree. And I figure there's I might have time for one more. I was cons I'm considering maybe a law degree in my 60s to be uh maybe a civil rights lawyer or an immigration lawyer as they're in high need right now, and then you get to help people and also get paid. It just took me, I think, a long time. Took me to about 40 to figure out I was raised Gen X, you know, by boomer parents who were taught us you don't need to find a job that you enjoy. We spend 33 years of our life. If we get to live to be 100, we spend about 33 years asleep. An entire third of your life is spent asleep. So now you got 66 years left. You're gonna spend about 33 of those working. And I figure you might as well, and what I counsel my younger clients is what if you spent those 33 years doing something you really loved that was also congruent with your own core values? And they're like, Well, that sounds great. And you get to make money at it too, because we still have to put lights on and keep the water flowing. So we can't all be poets and make no money or philosophers that make no money. So I found my little niche with work business, and there's no bad case of the Mondays or anything for me. I wake up on a Monday morning and I kind of cartwheel or slip out of bed, and I can't wait to go see usually my regular clients, and I've had some for years and years, and they some come and they get better and they leave, and some just want to engage in personal growth and we stay at it and they read more books and we they grow as individuals and they keep growing and growing and they want to know what's new, what am I missing? How can I do better? And maybe after two or three years, they I call graduating from therapy, and they're they tell me how the only real feedback I get directly is from clients is they say, Oh, my life is so much better for the time I spent with you. And that feels very rewarding and fulfilling that I didn't get in the business world.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

So looking back when you were in high school, not even really considering going on to a four-year college, what was missing that? You were obviously a, you know, the smart kid who didn't get good grades, but why that path?

SPEAKER_01 14:07

Well, part of it was with my mom passing, and then very shortly after that, my dad got remarried and moved out. And I knew that he was selling the house. This is my one odd story where I knew he was selling the house and gonna live with his new wife when I was asleep after working 18 hours that day, and the tent came over the house to fumigate the house. And this is before cell phone and text messaging and phone calls, so I had no idea. I just woke up to a guy walking on top of the roof. So I called my dad on a landline and I said, Are you selling the house? Because yeah, I'm having fumigators out today. And I said, It would have been nice to let me know, but luckily they got me out of there in time. But I had no money, no opportunities. I had a job, but I didn't have money to pay for college, so I just figured well, I'm gonna take the worker out. And then I did that for 24 years straight. I was employed every day, other than vacations for 24 years straight, survived a couple of recessions, but was always really good at my work, but it never felt personally fulfilling for me. Felt kind of shallow and hollow and empty at times. Like I'm just sitting here working, making money, spending it, and getting nowhere.

SPEAKER_00 15:12

Did you have any mentors? Anyone who kind of helped you, like even going to college, that was a big step.

SPEAKER_01 15:19

I had no mentors at all, like graduating from high school and just taking care of my mom. And my dad just kind of he went through his own grieving process and then remarriage process. So I remember about four years before my mom passed away, there were five kids in the house with a mom and a dad, and everything was happy. And in about five years, four older siblings moved out. Mom died, and dad moved out in the flash of an eye. I graduated high school and I was lost and dazed and confused, and found a job that was given to me or assisted by a friend who happened to work in printing and said, Hey, we got a job at my company, and just got there, and I just started working. And I had no mentors. I thought about college, but I had nobody, not a single soul on this planet that would help me figure out how to get into college. No idea. And then at 40, I was lucky my wife had been to college before, and she's like, they have these things called academic advisors. I'm like, I don't even know what that term means. Um 40, and she's like, Yeah, they help you get through with all this stuff. They're kind of your mentors. And then I got that. And then once I was in school for teaching, the professors were all my mentors. And then student teaching, you're assigned a mentor teacher that helps you learn how to teach. That was great. And therapy, you're assigned a supervisor, which is your mentor. And I had a really great one who helped me learn everything I needed to know pretty much about being a therapist. And that was a year and a half long supervision program that they it's a requirement. So I had mentors much later in life, but I think I could have really used a mentor at 18 or 19 to get into college. College just seemed like that was for other people, not for me. I was in a blue-collar neighborhood, and my high school had no such thing as a school counselor or a guidance counselor or high or college counselor, and that that position did not exist. It was we're gonna graduate you and you move on and go figure it out on your own.

SPEAKER_00 17:08

So now you are seriously considering law school.

SPEAKER_01 17:11

Yes. I I love history, love the law. I'm enjoying being a therapist. I know my brain is a very curious brain, and I figure I've probably got about five to ten years, somewhere in that window, about year eight or nine, I'm gonna start to get the itch, and I'm gonna go back and still practice during the day. And I can still always see people the rest of my life, but I can also just lighten my caseload and also go to law school, pass the bar, and then help people in that way. And I just I think I always need something for my curious brain to be learning and discovery. And I remember why one of my classes for to be a therapist is called career counseling. And I found it very interesting on how a lot of people, when they get to be and they're even their 40s and 50s, the steel mill closes down and they're like, now what am I gonna do? They go into depression, maybe pick up an addiction. And the thought of retraining or getting a new college degree is very anathema to them. And I've had the opposite of that brain. Like, I'd like to say, I'd like to be like a millennial where I have six different professions by the time I die. I got at it late, so I probably only have four. But I think that's a much more interesting and less boring way to go through life.

SPEAKER_00 18:22

Well, I'm a Gen Xer and I've had several under my belt. So looking back now, if you could tell your 20-year-old self something, what would you tell him?

SPEAKER_01 18:35

I'd say to believe in myself. I didn't believe in myself at all. I didn't believe in my abilities or capabilities to go to college. I said college is not for me, college is for everybody else. College is for the really smart kids, not for the 2.87 kids. And so I was I'm gonna go get this kind of a trade job. There's nothing wrong with it. It served me well for 24 years, provided all the income I needed, but it was a job, not a vocation. So we learned in I learned in Scology class, they have a job, and the next level up is like a profession, white collar, and then they have what they call a vocation. So both teaching and now working as a an LPC is a vocation for me. It's part of my calling. And that's what I would recommend my 20-year-old self. If I could have gone into maybe taught for 15 years from 22 to 37, and then been a therapist for another 20 years and then a lawyer from maybe, you know, 60 to 80, then I think that's the way it would have gone. But I just didn't trust myself. So I while the 24 years was good in trade school trade work, it was not nearly as fulfilling as it could have been if I would have believed more in myself at 18, 19, or 20.

SPEAKER_00 19:45

You have kids. What are you telling them as far as careers and education?

SPEAKER_01 19:50

It's been interesting because my oldest son is brilliant. He got a 4.37 GPA in high school because he took all the AP classes and really smart. He got a full right academic scholarship to university here in Texas. And he went all the way until the last semester. So he was 12 credit hours away from getting his bachelor's degree, and he told me he wanted to leave college and go become a chef. And I said, What are you talking about? And he said, You remember when I was 11, I told you I wanted to be a chef. And I said, Yeah, but you're this close. You're this close. But I also believe in chasing your dreams and doing whatever you want in your life. And I've never told my kids what they should or shouldn't do. So I said, Okay, what do you need? And he said a set of knives. So I bought him the set of knives, the leather, and then this encyclopedia of cooking that was like a $300 book and sent him down to Austin to become a chef. So now he's uh it's the step below a sous-chef, which is a chef parte, I think they call it Chef Parte. So he's the chef partee at a fancy restaurant. He cooks for some of his guests are Brad Pitt and Kendrick Lamar, Scotty Scheffler, the number one golfer in the world. They all come into his restaurant to have his cooking. He's taking that brilliant mind that he had with his engineering degree, and he kind of engineers these food plates that are amazing. That's his dream. He's living a life congruent with what he wants to do and his values. And it's not what I expected it to be, as some sort of an academic career or professor or an anthropologist or anything like that. He's a chef. And I had those feelings with my other, like, you know, fancy friends that their kids are off to be engineers and that, like, my son's a cook or a chef, and that's less than. But I got all over all of that because I ate his food and saw his clientele. And I'm like, yeah, he chased his dreams. And I wished I would have had that confidence in myself at 18, like he did, to go chase his dreams and just do what he wants to do in his life. Whether it's college degree, white collar, blue collar, chefing, cooking food, or other people getting in an elevator with Kendrick Lamar, which he said was the highlight of his life. Yeah. And asking him questions is just him and Kendrick Lamar. And he's like, Thanks for all the food.

SPEAKER_00 21:54

That's incredible.

unknown 21:54

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:55

And you have a younger son. What are you telling him?

SPEAKER_01 21:58

Telling him continue to try. Chase's dreams. He's I think he he's a lot like me. He has the ADHD and he has some of those fears and a lack of belief in himself. And I'm doing all I can to have him believe in himself, but he works for like, you know, he's been working primarily in title companies and kind of doing just business world kind of things, but I don't think that's his passion or his dream. So it's still he's still a work in process. He's in his late 20s, so he's got time to figure it out. So I'm hopeful he'll find his passion and his dream. He just hasn't found it yet. And I think some people just don't find it maybe until early 30s or mid-30s, or I don't know. I'm not good at predicting the future at all.

SPEAKER_00 22:38

So I don't usually ask this question, but I'm gonna ask you, you did a massive pivot at 40. What would you tell someone at that age? What advice would you give? Someone who's feeling unfulfilled, who you know feels maybe even stuck. What would you tell them?

SPEAKER_01 22:58

Yeah. And I've had to tell clients over the years that in a similar situation, I would say a good 30% of my practice is people coming to me with high levels of anxiety and at times mild to moderate depression because of their work. Work drives a lot of mental unwellness. They're completely dissatisfied, they're overworked. It's part of the good parts of capitalism are there. There's bad parts of capitalism. We're discouraged in America from taking vacation. I've talked to somebody in Denmark. They take two six-week vacations. They take a six week off in the summer and six weeks off in the winter. It's government mandated, 12 weeks a year. And they're happy. They're mentally happy by and large. And we are worn out, overworked, dissatisfied. But it's and I understand some people financially it's hard to do. I saved up for two years before I was able to retire from the business world to go back to college. So I had a fund there. But at the same time, I mean, income went from a pretty high income to a lower income. But man, has the dividends paid off? Like from, you know, I graduated like I think I was 42 or 43 until now 56 been, you know, a lot of years of joy and fun and no anxiety for me and no depression for me. It's been just great. It's a great way to go through life. And I figure if I can't do it from 18 to 98, I'll do it from 42 to 98. And that's okay. So I definitely recommend everybody, if you want to pivot, if you want to get into a new profession, be responsible financially, save up some money. I eat a lot of beans and rice. Like I would put the beans in a crock pot and come home and boil a bag of rice. I could eat dinner for two bucks and save a lot of money and cut back on dish network and cell phones and things and save up money to pay for college. I paid as I went and graduated and went back to earning money about three years. And then I was able to do the master's degree at night while I taught during the day, which was hard. But the teaching allowed me to get out of work at four o'clock, not at eight o'clock, like the business world. So I was able to do my college work, coursework from like five till nine with breaks in between for kids and family. But I definitely recommend it. I mean, life is short, and the longer you get it in life, you get to 56, 60, 62. It gets really short and it starts moving really fast. And we only get really one lifetime here on this planet. So I say live it to the fullest.

SPEAKER_00 25:18

That's awesome. Thank you for that. And I wish you a lot of luck. I hope you go to law school. Thank you so much for listening to Pathfound. If anything we talked about today connected with you or gave you a new perspective, we'd love it if you subscribed, left a review, or shared the episode with someone you care about. You can also find us on Instagram at Pathfound Podcast. To explore more stories, resources, and ways to get involved, visit Keystoneetwork.org. This podcast is just one part of the journey. A Keystone Network, we're helping young people and anyone figuring it out as they go build meaningful futures one step at a time. A huge thank you to my podcast editor, David Strutt. You can find him on LinkedIn for helping bring these stories to life, and to Elizabeth Miner at Silvermine Creative for the beautiful artwork and web design. And if you're on your own path, navigating the unknown, making a pivot, or simply figuring it out as you go, just know you're not alone. The route may not be linear, but there's always a way forward. I'm Monica Argandonia, and I'll see you next time on Path Found.