By BJ Roche

How long has it been since you decided to step out of your well-worn path and decided to do something totally new--some kind of activity in which you were willing to risk being a beginner again? Piano lessons? Tennis? Career change?

I'm finding myself with a ton of new, interesting, and well-paying work these days, in part because I took a shot and tried something new. Even though I didn't know a single thing about it.

The first thing I did was start this site. The second was to develop a course called Entrepreneurial Journalism. Both experiences have led me to new opportunities.

If you've been reading about job losses in the news business, you'll understand why so many programs are developing courses in entrepreneurship. I wanted to teach students how to use their journalistic skills to develop their own web-based businesses, and maybe create a job for themselves.

The only problem was that I didn't know much about entrepreneurship. So I took  an online class, started reading books and magazines and websites and talking to people. It turned out that I knew more than I realized, having navigated more than two decades of freelance writing.

Still, I was afraid I didn't know enough. I wanted to put the course off for a semester until I became an expert, but a colleague urged me to get it up and running last fall.

I'm glad that he pushed, because the class was a success. Students learned lots of new skills, and I found myself on an interesting new track. I'm thinking about new ways to make a living with my writing, and I'm using what I've learned to write about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship education for publications and websites, including  LifeTuner, the new AARP-sponsored financial information site for young people.

It's much easier to be a beginner at age 55 than it used to be. You can learn so much online these days if you're willing to put in the time. You can take online courses from dozens of colleges and universities. You can subscribe to hundreds of E-books on business and technology over at Books 24x7. You can find courses in everything from Arabic to Quantum Mechanics at ITunes U.

But the first step is not worrying about looking like an idiot.

Here's a great post by business writer Barry Moltz called Have the Courage to Become a Beginner Again.

And, here's another writer I discovered now that I'm more entrepreneurial and trawling sites like the Harvard Business Review--Peter Bregman. He's super-entrepreneurial, and sends me a e-mail everytime he has a new post. I need to do that!

Have you had a new beginning lately? How's it working out?