Where I’m From
I was born and raised in North Carolina, in the heart of the U.S. Southeast. It’s the kind of place where most people – at least in America – think it’s about family, the Bible, and general Southern “Bless Your Heart” kindness.
My Early Years
But, while those things existed in some form or another for myself, it was really more about weekdays filled with walking to the bus stop, going to school, walking home from the bus stop, doing homework, doing chores, bath and bed. Weekends were waking up Saturday morning being told to go help our father do some early morning work, then staying outside and playing till dinnertime. Sunday? Church services. Next week? Rinse and repeat… for years and years.
In my childhood home, love and discipline went hand in hand, where doing “the right thing” meant obedience to God’s Word (clarification… what the Bible said). And while my religious beliefs have changed over time, there are early lessons that gave me roots that have both grounded and challenged me in the years since.
The Start of “Adult” Life
For more than twenty-six years, I’ve worked in the software technology industry — wearing just about every engineering-focused hat along the way: software engineer, engineering manager, leader/director, and consultant. It’s a field that rewards constant learning, contribution, adaptability, and persistence. In many ways, it mirrored my own professional evolution. Success came, but somewhere along the way, I realized that “successful” didn’t always mean fulfilled.
When That Adult Life You Expect Gets Disrupted
Life has a way of humbling us into clarity. Leaving the belief system of my youth in my 20’s and divorce in my 40’s led to three separate periods of deep personal identity crisis.
First, in my early 20’s, everything I understood about how I should think about my existence on this earth and how that impacted my life afterwards was thrown into chaos. My rules for life. My sense of right and wrong. My original understanding of love and righteousness being turned, over time, into what I perceived in some of my fellow believers as love versus righteousness for anyone outside the belief system. All of it being constantly challenged, defended, reasoned, and then made unreasonable in my mind. It was a start of dark times.
Then, later in life, my strong and stable career was, as I believe it, sabotaged without reason or clear explanation, forcing me to adapt to a new professional path. That would have been a challenge enough, had it not coupled with a separation and divorce from my first wife. I hold no ill will and goodness knows I’ve made plenty of my own mistakes, but at that point the only thing that I had steady in my life was my health; or so I thought.
Not but three years later, health struggles reminded me of my own age and mortality, and it wasn’t hard to understand that the wake-up calls were getting louder and louder. Each situation stripped away various noises that rang in my head, leaving me face-to-face with questions I’d avoided for years: Who am I without career titles, a religion, a spouse, “success”? What really matters? What does it mean to live fully alive? What does it mean to be “me”? I do not yet know the full answers to these questions, but they are where I keep a good portion of my focus, curiosity, and experimentation.
Where am I Today?
Here’s what I do know today: I’m a father of two young children who teach me more about patience, curiosity, and joy than any person, book, movie, video, post, or job ever could. And when I’m not working or with my family/friends, I find peace in painting, hiking, mountain biking, kayaking, or just getting lost in good music, art, or a movie. These things have shown themselves to carry meaning in my life and make it feel more full, but I believe it’s partly because they are the times when I’m also focused on myself. They, combined with the special people in my life, are the things that get me out of the funk of living a life on daily repeat. Of living a life that otherwise seems rather stagnant.
What I also know now is that I’m on a mission to revive my life. And I’ve learned that revival isn’t one big event that I can set as a New Year’s Resolution and be done with it in months. It’s a series of small, honest choices to show up differently each day. I need to constantly experiment and see what sits right with who I am and want to be. I need to acknowledge and yet learn from my mistakes. But most importantly to me at the moment is to find peace in understanding that there is no “me” that is not always changing in some way. So, this mission is what I refer to as my Reviving Life Project.
This space, and the work I’m doing, are my way of documenting that process. Not because I believe myself to be some expert guru who is going to provide answers to anyone else with how to deal with their own struggles, but as someone walking the same imperfect, beautiful path as everyone else. And, who wants to capture that journey as something that I, and those special people in my life, can reflect on.
So, What Happens Next?
From here, this will be my online journal capturing the journey that is trying to form the life I want and become the person I want to be.
The truth? I have no idea what exactly is next. But every exploration into life doesn’t start with a destination since that can’t be known; it starts with the first step. This is it.