0xcraft

After a woman reached out to me on Facebook last Father's Day I took the 23andme test. Yes I had a new to me baby sister!

She found me after taking the test herself looking for her (our) paternal linneage. A not too distant common relative did the 23andme too and a little detective work in online obituaries was all she needed to find me. Strangest FB message I have gotten to date. I thought she was a cybersecurity recruiter as I noticed she was looking at my LinkedIn profile a few days prior to contact.

I used to be more concerned about the privacy implications. Maybe it's my age or something but I feel at peace with my choice. Besides I realized once one somewhat close relative is in the database it takes very little to link us all up.

Was it worth it all things considered? For me it was though without the desire to confirm our relationship I probably wouldn't have done it.

I have been thinking a nice time to go would be at the finish of an evening of tango. If my wife is still alive we share our final dance feeling the depth of our connection. If she has gone on before me dancing with friends and a bunch of lovely ladies 60 years younger works too. Assuming I make it to 90+ yo.

Though I would like to say a final good bye to my kids. Hm. They would appreciate me making a tango exit from this life, too. So all good.

Thank you for sharing so openly! My career and business life has been at best mediocre by most common measures. The inner journey though has been immensely rich.

Argentine Tango! I used to need 3 or 4 drinks to get near a dance floor. Never mind the gut wrenching fear of asking a woman to dance. Now I teach tango. Nothing like midlife to shake things up.

If you find yourself in Bellingham, WA, Sparks Museum of Electrical Invention is a fun little museum to spend a few hours wandering.

https://www.sparkmuseum.org/

My kids are launching into adult life and finding their callings and paths.

I am thankful for my expanding understanding of family. My wife's ex is maybe not a brother but close. Our Christmas mornings have exes, current and former in-laws, kids, and extended family all mixed together in wonderful fun ways.

This year a half sister, I didn't know I had, connected with me. The first DNA relative I can talk with about tech. Now we are catching up on 40 plus years of life we didn't share!

The never ending energy to learn, grow, and expand my self awareness.

The many ways love comes to us.

My experience relating being raped to friends was generally not a positive one. I found women tended to be more open to believing my story. Men were pretty skeptical. Of course, sharing my experience didn't happen for many years. In the mid 1980s the idea that men even could be raped by a woman was a bit farfetched both socially and legally.

At 53 also and a number of career reboots, as well as staying at home raising kids, my observation is the same about the making life up as they (we) go along. Conversations with friends who cashed out at 7 figures after reaching very high levels in very large corps just affirms the view for me. Pretty much everyone appears to be winging it. There is a definite comfort and freedom in this realization.

Can relate to the article. Since 2003 or so I have been homeschooling my kids, very intentionally developing my spiritual path, taking on occasional web dev and database projects, and being the stay at home dad.

Up to that point, I had been in healthcare analytics doing everything from custom ETL, database design, to ad-hoc reports. Writing code and solving problems related to data was one of my favorite things.

Well the kids grew up and my engineering brain stayed active. Except, between age and the various non-traditional choices I had made in life my self-confidence was shot regarding employment.

Six weeks ago I accepted an offer for a data and business analyst position in healthcare at age 52. The pay is modest, the people are great, and I feel in many ways like I am starting all over. It is easy to regret lost time and opportunity. I sure have at times. Really I traded one opportunity set for another.

Now I see I am well suited for a new kind of role which uses my technical and non-technical strengths. In fact I was told being able to bridge technical and non-technical areas of the organization was a primary reason to offer me the position. I still get to write small bits of software to automate processes my new employer didn't realize could be automated. My favorite type of software to write.

Ironically, I have more fields in and out of tech I want to explore than I did 20 years ago. Yet, my life is over halfway to the finish line!