In 15 days, my office will collect my badge, disable my login credentials, and distribute the obligatory retirement cake.
After 27 years climbing the technical ladder to become a Technical Architect Director, I’m walking away at 52 — decades before the traditional retirement age. My calendar, once packed with system deployments and architecture reviews, will suddenly offer nothing but blank squares.
Colleagues have already started with their jokes about how I’ll fill my days with travel and hobbies. Their assumptions make me cringe.
These narratives about “enjoying the golden years” feel designed for someone else entirely. When I’m no longer a Technical Architect Director, who am I?
This question keeps me awake at night. Not because of finances — I’m at peace about those numbers. The insomnia is about identity. About purpose.
About what got buried under decades of doing what I was good at, instead of what made me feel alive.
Career consumed my identity
I found my way into enginering and tech at an early age. Structured thinking and creative problem-solving came easily, and others noticed.
By 25, I was leading teams in an environment where ambition was everything and balance meant weakness. I worked relentlessly. Delivered perfectly. Revealed nothing.
The strategy worked. Promotion by promotion, project by project, I built a reputation for excellence and high standards. When a senior executive once asked how I managed to juggle my job while raising two kids, I smiled and gave her the line I used for moments like that: “Efficiency and good time management.”
I didn’t mention the 4 AM work sessions. Or the birthday parties I coordinated via conference call.
Landscape photography? Dropped when I became a manager. Creative writing? Vanished after Allie was born. French lessons? Abandoned during a critical system migration. Guitar? Relegated to “someday” after Brandon started kindergarten and my scope doubled.
None of these were decisions. They were triage. A form of professional Darwinism where only the fittest, most productive activities survived.
One time, an executive coach asked what I enjoyed outside of work and family. I said I listened to music on my commute. She looked concerned.
Preparing for early departure
When I told my team I was retiring, the responses fell into two predictable categories. The older ones said I was lucky. The younger ones didn’t understand.
“You’re at the peak of your career,” one of them said. “Why would you leave now?”
Brandon said the same thing over dinner. “Your work is everything to you,” he said. “What will you even do all day?”
Fair question. My children grew up watching me move family events to accommodate product launches. Our holiday traditions were built around my quarterly release schedule.
They weren’t wrong. Work had become a fortress. It also became a prison.
Most of my social life is work. Most of my sense of value is work. Most of my coping mechanisms are work. Without it, I wasn’t sure what would remain.
Ellen, my retired neighbor, said the first three months would feel like free-falling.
“You’re not just leaving a job,” she told me during our morning walk. “You’re leaving a self you spent decades constructing.”
Finding forgotten fragments
The box was in Allie’s new apartment. She pulled it from the back of a closet while we unpacked her kitchen. “I found this when we cleaned out the attic,” she said. “It seemed important.”
Inside were stories I wrote in my twenties. A half-finished manuscript about a woman hitchhiking across Europe. Photographs I’d taken during a solo trip through New Mexico.
I sat on the hotel bed later that night and read the words I’d written decades earlier. The stories were clunky. The voice was strong. She was bold and curious and much less tired than I am now.
That woman hadn’t been buried. She’d been boxed up and stored.
When I got home, I put the box on the dining room table. I didn’t touch it for days. I walked past it like it was radioactive. Then one rainy afternoon, I pulled out my old 35mm camera. I read the manual again, front to back.
That night, I slept through the night for the first time in weeks.
Technical skills meet creative resurrection
Reconnecting with my creativity hasn’t required abandoning my technical brain. I still make spreadsheets. I still draft plans. But now they’re for photography workshops and writing prompts.
I structured a creative “onboarding plan.” Week one: relearn aperture and ISO. Week two: attend a generative writing session. Month two: guitar lessons.
It’s not loose or spontaneous. It’s me. I like frameworks. I like knowing what comes next.
When Brandon visited last weekend, he saw me researching cameras and putting together a portfolio checklist.
“Still project managing, I see,” he said.
“Some habits serve multiple purposes,” I told him.
Confronting the void
I still wake up with anxiety. Sometimes at 2 AM. Sometimes at 5:30. The thought of not being needed in the same way haunts me.
Will the things I’m doing now be meaningful?
Will I be respected once I’m no longer Director of Anything?
The fear isn’t abstract. My social life is deeply entangled with work. Most of my friends are colleagues. Most of our time together revolved around deadlines.
Last week, I had lunch with Laurel, my longtime mentor. I told her my fears. She reminded me that I don’t have to stop being analytical or strategic. Those skills are still mine.
“The challenge,” she said, “is getting comfortable with questions that don’t have answers.”
Integration, not replacement
I’ve stopped seeing this transition as a fresh start. It’s not a new chapter. It’s a composite one.
The structured thinking that made me a strong architect helps me deconstruct visual composition. My leadership habits help me build my writing practice.
The obsessive perfectionism that used to drive my teams insane now makes me rehearse my guitar chords like a teenager prepping for recital.
The home office still has my framed awards. I didn’t take them down. They’re not relics. They’re reminders. I’ve done hard things before.
The monitors are gone. My desk holds camera gear and printed drafts. Creative writing books have replaced system design manuals. The room feels different. I do, too.
Maternal role reversal
Throughout their childhood, I nudged Allie and Brandon toward practicality. I offered praise for logic, structure, and strategic thinking. Their creative interests were fine, as long as they didn’t interfere with real-world goals.
That framework served me professionally. It served them, too. But it didn’t leave much room for exploration, or for mess.
Now I’m the one exploring. And it’s awkward. When I talked about taking guitar lessons again, Allie raised an eyebrow and asked if I’d been spending too much time on TikTok.
Brandon offered a gentle, “That’s cool, I guess,” with the enthusiasm of someone tolerating a parent’s midlife phase.
I caught Allie watching me one evening while I edited photos on my laptop. She looked like she wanted to say something but didn’t. A few days later, she sent a link.
“Thought this might be fun,” she wrote.
It was a weekend writing retreat. Mother-daughter pairs welcome. Structured sessions included.
She didn’t say much. She didn’t have to. That email told me she saw what I was trying to become — and didn’t think it was ridiculous.
Looking toward day sixteen
In 15 days, I’ll walk out of my office for the last time.
The fear remains. But it no longer owns the whole room.
I’ve stopped measuring time in deliverables and deadlines. The blank space on my calendar feels less like a void and more like a blank page.
Tomorrow morning, I’ll get up before sunrise. I won’t be checking my inbox. I’ll be driving to the lake with my camera. The photos won’t be great. They don’t need to be.
The woman taking them is no longer only who she was.
She’s something else now.
Something more.
