For my friend Barb, today is the first day of the rest of her life.

As long as I’ve known her, she has been a highly motivated, determined, brilliant career woman. She’s been working at the same oilfield services company for well over a decade, shuffling among senior individual contributor positions as reorganizations occur. She’s been steadily increasing her salary but has never been able to get any traction for a move into senior management.

Barb’s retirement dream has long been to work as personal financial advisor, although she’s in her thirties now, hardly ready to retire. About a year ago, she decided she had had enough of endless corporate politics in a nepotistic industry, and started school to get her certification in financial planning.

I mentioned that Barb was brilliant… she persuaded her employer to pay for the training. She set herself up for approval by including “benefits manager” as one of her career targets in her personnel documentation.

When the most recent of her employer’s periodic reorganizations started taking shape, and she realized there’d be no severance option for her yet again, she opted out. Last Friday was her last day of work as an employee, and today she walks into her home office a free woman, with a shiny new future in front of her.

Her focus for the next couple of months is completing her training and prepping for her securities license, and then she can begin to practice. She has a couple of options – working as an independent contractor for a brokerage firm, or buying an existing financial planning business.

How many of us dream of walking away from the corporate grind and, instead, doing what we love? And who doesn’t occasionally look in the mirror and wish for a profession that makes a difference?

Barb has had the guts to make that move. I am thrilled for her.