A new start... I think

Well its definitely time to take the first step off of this crossroads I have felt like I have been stuck on for awhile, or maybe I should say I was pushed off of it. I worked for a large financial/investment firm and I am a licensed financial professional and my company like so many other financial firms and banks have been reducing staff due to this on going credit crisis and recession. Little investment firms and failing banks are being gobbled up by bigger firms and banks, and that unfortunately leads to new problems, that most people don't think about. When 2 banks or investment firms merge, you end up with a whole lot of jobs that overlap each other and way too many employees, so the new company ends up letting go of a whole lot of employees while they are restructuring a new company. Add on top of that sales are down, the stock market is down and corporations are cutting corners wherever they can. While so many of us employees in this line of work have been living on pins and needles for months and months now and we have watched lot of other coworkers let go over the last year ,you just never want to believe you will be next. I knew the winds of change had been blowing at my place of employment, for quite awhile now, but I had hoped for the best. I am struggling with realizing that a place I have went to work at, for the last 13 years is no longer a part of my life. There have been times, who am I kidding .. most of the time I felt like I lived at my place of employment and that I spent more time there instead of with my own family. So I have had frustrations with my job but who honestly hasn't??? No job is perfect but after you have been there as long as I had been it had been become my second home, my second family, it was a part of me. To the corporation its not personal when they let people go, but to the employee it is and it still doesn't make it any easier when I was 1 of 8 people let go in the last 2 weeks. I know, I know look for a bright side right??? When one door closes the saying is another one opens, so I just need to keep an open mind. So there are a few things that I will not miss... the hour long commute each way to and from work, the hefty parking fees at the parking garage, the catty office politics, the stress of the constant ups and downs of the stock market, not having enough time for my family and home, the huge fuel bill I was paying to drive back and forth to work.... Its just that its change, 13 years is along time and this has been the only job that I have held in my adult life. Part time jobs in high school don't count, they weren't a career. Everyone keeps telling me I am young, I have plenty of time to start over, Retirement age is still a long waaaaaaaaaaaay off but what do I start over with? My job profession is in a field that is laying people off fast, the head lines every day tell of another bank laying of several hundred to several thousand employees, finding a good paying job in this line of work will be next to impossible for the next year or 2, I am afraid. And do I really want to go back to that line of work??? Now is the time to decide if I am going to reinvent myself, go back to school, start anew career or hope for the best and keep looking for work in my line of expertise and hope that over the next year thinks start looking up.