Life in Beta: The Reboot No One Asked For (Including Me)

For my first official blog post, I figured I’d introduce myself. Two years ago, I basically lost my mind and walked away from a 25-year career in IT. Okay, fine—technically it was 23 years. But let’s not split hairs when my joints already snap like glow sticks.

Fast forward a couple decades, and I was a senior system administrator. By society’s standards, I was “successful.” By my standards? I was a soul-sucked zombie fantasizing about swan-diving off the 405 on the way to a 7 a.m. scrum call. Traveling for work was fun in my twenties. But once I hit my mid-thirties and had a kid? Hard pass. Toss in 50+ hour workweeks, midnight system releases, and a 24/7 on-call rotation, and yeah—#invasivethoughts became a whole mood.

So I snapped. In the best possible way.

After I quit, I had zero clue what came next. People kept asking, “What’s your passion? What lights you up?” And I’m just sitting there thinking… sitting in a quiet room, not being touched, sounds pretty damn good. (If you know, you know.)

On a whim—or maybe divine chaos—I decided to go back to school and chase the one dream I abandoned back in the day: becoming a lawyer. And now, here I am, almost done with my first year. Somehow, I’m an A student?! That's… suspicious. Also: I’m the oldest person in every class. At this point, I’m basically the class mascot.

Questioning my life choices

Case in point: One day in stats class, a few classmates were showing me a phone game. I looked over and said, “Hey! This is just like Tetris!” They blinked. Silent. Three blank stares. These kids had no idea what Tetris was. At least two of them had just graduated high school last spring. Is Tetris... vintage now? I’d insert a melty face emoji here, but I still haven’t figured out how. (There’s a reason I’m not vlogging. #tiredoftech)

Anyway, welcome to my reboot. My Life in Beta. Is it a midlife crisis? A bold, calculated pivot? Mmm... more like flying by the seat of my yoga pants. Time will tell whether I soar or faceplant. But hey—either way, I hope it’s an entertaining ride.

Before all this, I was juggling it all: parenting, volunteering at my kid’s school, and working full-time. My laptop was basically surgically attached to me. I was that mom taking a conference call at school drop-off, whisper-screaming “mute your line, please” into my Bluetooth earpiece. I didn’t just burn out—I torched the whole damn motherboard.

Let’s rewind.

It’s 1999. I’m in my first year of college, half-assing my classes and full-assing (I'm making that a word for this blog turned short story) my social life. Some friends who worked at Gateway Computers (yes, the cow-spotted boxes) asked if I wanted a job. I figured, sure—why not? I was broke, barely scraping by, and honestly, computers came easy to me. And now I could get paid—like, good late-‘90s money—to tinker with computers and talk on the phone? Sold.

Forget the law school dream. Helping people sounded great, but so did not starving. The truth? I didn’t "choose" IT so much as I ran out of money for school. The job was survival. The career just… happened.

And now here I am. Full circle. Starting over. Still broke—but with purpose this time.