Career pivot pre-investing

[Melissa Geissinger]

Hey BP community! I'm new here and so far I'm loving what I'm seeing from this group. 

I wanted to introduce myself as well as ask what you might recommend for a career pivot. 

My name is Melissa and I am an aspiring real estate investor/rehabber located in Santa Rosa, Sonoma County, CA. I bought my first house 8 years ago, used the equity to move up a couple of years later, and unfortunately lost my home in the Tubbs fire in 2017. My husband and I rebuilt but later separated mere weeks before the home was completed. Multiple personal tragedies in quick succession left me unable to work for a couple of years. When I was able to go back to work, I decided to make a career 180 from website development into real estate and decided to become a mortgage advisor/loan officer. The downside to this is I didn't predict the separation nor the pandemic, so I'm left in a position where I need to have a more reliable source of income (ie not commission only) and I'm quickly running out of financial runway. 

I have been doing a lot of soul searching and figuring out what I want to do for the rest of my life and the answer has been a resounding REAL ESTATE INVESTMENT. I would prefer to ditch the client-facing and paperwork-heavy tasks of a loan officer and instead do more hands-on, project/property management-related work. I'm hungry to learn as much as I can about investing and am open to anyone's ideas or suggestions of where I might look for a great opportunity to grow my career in the investment direction while hopefully having an income that makes numbers work in the loan department. 

Creative solutions appreciated! Thanks!