A career can change direction without making its earlier years meaningless.

Leaving a field can feel like declaring the time spent in it wasted, especially when other people ask what it was all for. Those years produced judgment, contacts, habits of attention, and a clear knowledge of what you do not want, and all of that travels with you. A direction that ends is not the same as a direction that failed.

If you are turning, write down what the old work gave you that you will still use, and say it out loud when the question comes. Those years were spent living, not merely qualifying for something later.