What the Astrologer Didn't Tell Me

A few years ago, if you'd asked me what I did for a living, I would've answered without thinking.

Today...it's a much longer story.

People assume my real estate story starts the day I got licensed.

It doesn't.

It starts with a headset.

Years of someone else's worst day coming through my ears.

There was a policy for everything.

A button for everything.

A supervisor.

A chain of command.

My world was predictable.

Until it wasn't.

For the first time since I was in my twenties, I didn't have a job to drive to before sunrise on a Saturday morning.

No login.

No radio.

No identity that fit neatly on a name badge.

Three months later I was processing mortgages.

I spent the first month wondering if my brain had quietly retired without telling me.

Nobody talks about how hard it is to become a beginner again.

Learning new software.

New acronyms.

New systems.

Wondering why everyone else seems to know what they're doing while you're still trying to figure out where the printer is.

Eventually I found my rhythm.

Then the market changed.

So did my employment.

Funny how life has a way of saying,

“Great. You learned that. Next."

Then came a garage door company.

I was hired as the office manager.

Before long, I found myself dispatching technicians and answering phones.

I understood it came with the territory but I just hadn't expected it to become the territory.

Six months later..."We're taking the company in a different direction."

Apparently that direction didn't include me.

So naturally I became a professional organizer.

Which sounds a lot more glamorous than it actually is.

People think they want organization. Most of them just want permission to keep everything.

I wasn't creating beautiful spaces.

I was organizing instruction manuals from 2003 and moving boxes from one side of the garage to the other.

After a handful of clients I realized something.

People didn't need someone to organize their stuff. They needed someone to help them let it go.

And I wasn't super excited about making a career out of alphabetizing guilt.

Then Hawaii happened.

Not in some Eat, Pray, Love kind of way.

I flew to the Big Island to help my sister. She was putting on a coffee roaster certification course at our family's coffee farm.

People came from all over the country—and even a few from around the world—to spend the week learning about coffee.

My job was simple.

Cook the meals.

Keep everyone fed.

Help wherever I was needed.

One afternoon we drove over to Hilo just to wander around town...

That's when I saw the sign.

Astrology readings.

Perfect.

I figured, why not?

Best case, they tell me I'm destined for greatness.

Worst case, I get a good story.

Within the first few minutes and without me saying anything ,she looked at me and asked,

"Are you a real estate agent?"

"No."

"What do you do?"

I laughed.

Not because it was funny.

Because I genuinely didn't know.

Imagine spending decades building a life...and suddenly not knowing how to answer the simplest question in the world.

She talked about karma.

Timing.

Big changes coming.

Maybe she was right.

Maybe she wasn't.

But I flew home thinking about one thing.

Real estate.

So I did what I always do.

I went all in.

Ordered the books.

Printed the PDFs.

Bought the highlighters.

Made flash cards.

I treated the California real estate exam like it was a SWAT callout.

Every night I'd sit at my computer trying to cram another chapter into a brain that had already convinced itself it wasn't good at tests.

I'd failed the notary exam and that failure had become evidence. Evidence that maybe I just wasn't one of those people.

Then life did what life keeps doing.

It introduced me to someone.

A friend said,

"You should meet James. He’s a real estate agent."

A few days later I did.

He'd heard I was studying.

Asked how it was going.

I launched into this whole explanation about flash cards and practice exams and color coding and highlighting.

He let me finish my whole speech and said, "You know... stop trying to memorize everything."

I looked at him like he'd just told me to stop breathing.

He smiled.

"Finish the course. Schedule the exam. Come ride with me."

Ride with him?

That sounded a whole lot better than another night with flash cards.

So I did.

Instead of reading about agency relationships...

I watched one happen.

Instead of studying contracts...

I watched people sign them.

Instead of memorizing vocabulary...

I listened to conversations.

I sat in kitchens.

Walked through houses.

Met buyers.

Met sellers.

Opened doors.

Mostly, I listened.

The very first day I rode with James I met another agent named Mark.

At the time he was just another guy in an office.

I had no idea he'd show up again later in the story.

Somewhere during those weeks something shifted.

I realized real estate wasn't really about houses.

It was about people making enormous life decisions while pretending they weren't terrified.

I understood that.

I'd been talking to people in the middle of life-changing moments for twenty-two years.

The scenery had changed.

The people hadn't.

Then I took the exam.

First try.

Passed.

To this day I don't know if I passed because I finally studied the right way...or because someone believed I could before I fully believed it myself.

I got licensed.

Hung my license with a brokerage.

Started figuring it out one client at a time.

I closed a house.

Then another.

And another.

I loved the freedom.

I loved getting a commission check with my name on it.

I loved that no two days looked the same.

Then, about a year in, something happened.

I ran out of contracts.

Eventually … I ran out of contacts.

I started wondering if I was going to become one of those agents who quietly disappears after a couple of years.

Not because I didn't love the business.

Because I loved it enough to know I wasn't doing it the way I needed to.

I wasn't missing passion.

I was missing structure.

I needed accountability.

Training.

Open houses.

People to bounce ideas off of.

I needed to stop recreating the wheel every time I wanted to make a listing flyer or learn a new contract or figure out the next step.

I needed to be around people who were doing it every single day.

So I thought about that first day.

About the people I met.

About Mark.

I reached out.

"Hey... I'm thinking about joining your team."

His response was simple.

"Welcome aboard."

And just like that...

I became a beginner again.

Now my days are filled with onboarding videos.

Zoom meetings.

Training.

Systems.

Passwords.

New software.

Enough logins to make my dispatch career feel simple.

Some days my brain is fried.

Some days I wonder what I got myself into.

And then I remember...

I've felt this way before.

Every new beginning has felt overwhelming.

Every single one.

The uncomfortable part always comes before competence.

People always ask, "Aren't you giving up a lot of your commission?"

Maybe.

But I've got to pay somewhere.

If part of my commission buys me growth, mentorship, structure, and the chance to become a better agent...that feels like a pretty good investment.

I mean … yeah money matters.

Of course it does.

But that's not what keeps pulling me back.

It's the people.

My friend from kindergarten, helping her sell the home where one chapter of her life ended after her divorce... and watching her begin another.

Helping Jimmy's family sell his mom's manufactured home after she passed away. A transaction on paper. Anything but a transaction in real life.

My parents trusting me to sell the home where so much of our family history lived. Watching it go from just another listing to being featured in the Sacramento Bee's real estate section felt like more than a sale. It felt like honoring a legacy.

You see, nobody calls a Realtor because life stayed exactly the same.

They call because they're standing in the middle of a transition.

Maybe that's why this feels familiar.

For years people called me in the middle of emergencies.

Now they call me in the middle of turning points.

Different emergency. Same human being on the other end of the phone.

For years, it felt like I was just bouncing from one thing to the next.

Trying on careers that didn't fit.

Starting over.

Beginning again.

Now I wonder if every single one of those jobs was quietly preparing me for this one.

Dispatch taught me how to stay calm.

Mortgages taught me details.

Garage doors taught me patience.

Professional organizing taught me that people usually don't need more space.

They need less stuff.

And real estate?

Real estate lets me use all of it.

I've had to become a beginner more times than I ever expected.

Every version of me was training the next one.

Turns out the job was never to become someone different.

It was to become more myself.

I guess that astrologer was right about one thing.

Big changes were coming.

She just forgot to mention how many times I'd have to start over.