Deciding To Make A Change
At 41 years old, I went back to college.
That sentence alone was intimidating to say out loud. I had questions running through my head: Am I too old for this? Did I miss my chance? Can I really start over in a brand-new field while supporting a family?
But here’s the truth I discovered: it is possible. Hard, yes. Scary, definitely. But absolutely possible.
This is my story, and I share it not because I think everyone should do exactly what I did, but because I want to reassure anyone standing where I once stood: you’re not too late. Getting to that decision took me years, though, so let me start at the beginning.
Taking The Hard Road
Years ago, I had a job as an inventory specialist. During my time there, I was responsible for a variety of process improvement, efficiency, and space optimization projects using the Lean Six Sigma methodology. The first time I conducted a cycle count, the accuracy was 67%. My last inventory count… was 100%.
I loved it!
I loved the root cause analysis: digging deep in the SQL database to find proof that it was a programming bug or end user error that was affecting the inventory accuracy. I loved the process improvement: creating a helpdesk ticketing system and integrating it into the scanners so workers could report inventory errors. I loved the change management: being a key member of the team that introduced the company to a web-based Warehouse Management System and managed the go-live process. And I loved the pride of being able to use technology in a way that very few people in the company could.
Over 500 people and I was in a group of a half dozen who were tech savvy. I taught myself… on the job. And that experience will stay with me forever.
Eventually, though, the time came for me to leave. There were reasons that I won’t get into here, but I wanted more. I wanted to grow. I decided to try and become a warehouse manager. I wanted to double down on the work and skills that I had grown so fond of. I was wrong.
Instead of climbing the corporate ladder, I tumbled down it. From inventory specialist, to receiving clerk, to warehouse worker, and eventually back to being a carpenter, where I had started as an apprentice at 18. I had become reactive in my job search. Rather than going after what I wanted, I took what I could get. I felt stuck.
For most of my adult life, I worked in fields that demanded hard, physical labor. Carpentry. Warehousing. Long hours, heavy lifting, always chasing stability. I wasn’t unhappy all the time. There were seasons where I thrived, especially when I got the chance to solve problems, improve processes, or use technology in small ways at work. But I always had a nagging sense that something was off. It wasn’t until years later that I figured out why… I was trying to climb the wrong ladder!
Talent, Passion, Mission
Dangling from the bottom of the corporate ladder, I found a silver lining. While the work was very physical, it didn’t require much brain power or focus. So, I began listening to audiobooks and podcasts. In one year, I listened to 72 audiobooks! I learned a great deal during that time. But one of the most valuable things I came across was the Ken Coleman Podcast.
Ken Coleman calls himself “America’s Career Coach.” To anyone who has spent any time listening, it is a title well deserved. One of the pillars of Ken’s philosophy is the “sweet spot”. It is the idea that everyone can find a job that brings them joy, a job they are meant to do. It can be found at the intersection of talent, passion, and mission.
Talent is what you do best. Passion is what you love to do most. Mission is the results that give you a sense of satisfaction in a job well done. Ken posits that if a person is unhappy with their job, it is most likely because one of the key elements is out of sync. Either you’re not good at it, so you don’t enjoy it, or you’re not passionate about it, so you resent it, or the results don’t matter to you on a personal level and so it just becomes a chore. He will often guide listeners to their sweet spot with a simple question:
If money was no object, what would you do?
I started to do some reflecting, thinking back on chapters in my life. What I liked and what I didn’t like. It wasn’t easy… I had to confront myself and deal with my faults and failures in equal measure with my triumphs. But eventually I had a breakthrough. Not a big AH HA moment, but a gradual progression tempered by fear of failure and of the unknown. Until I realized, I have failed many times; I had stood many times at the brink of the unknown and found the courage to carry on. I embraced my failures for the learning opportunities they were.
Failure isn’t the end, it’s an opportunity to start fresh with a new perspective.
And so I shed the fear and began to look forward to the wide open future. I decided to seek always a new horizon. Armed with the knowledge that I am self-aware, I declared in one statement my talent, passion, and mission…
I want to use my skills of adaptability, creativity, and analytical thinking, and my passion for continuous improvement, innovation, and learning, to become an expert in a highly technical and complex field to dramatically improve the efficiency and workflow of the people I am serving.
This mission statement would evolve over time, but it provided the clarity I needed to move forward.
A False Start
I now knew what I wanted to do. I just had to figure out how and where to do it. I realized my mission statement was slightly vague, but it was supposed to be, to an extent. I started researching different fields to find processes that people struggled with. I was searching for a need that I could fill. I landed on real estate.
From the outside looking in, I thought it was a great idea. I would often hear people talk about how stressful purchasing a home can be. I thought, “Hey, there’s a complex process that I could smooth out for clients… I could even make it enjoyable.” So I spent 6 months getting certified as a real estate agent.
Pretty early on, I realized the reality was far from what I expected. Cold calling clients isn’t fun. People automatically assume you’re some unscrupulous bottom feeder. How could I tell them that I was honestly trying to be helpful when from their perspective I was just trying to take 6% of the equity in their home? (Even though agents only get a small fraction of the commission.) I was assigned a mentor who checked out after our first meeting. And I discovered how saturated the market is with part-time agents. It was a well-known fact in the real estate community: Everyone is an agent… if you don’t know an agent, you don’t know anybody.
I didn’t like the tactics, I didn’t like the pay structure. It wasn’t for me. So I pulled back and reevaluated by asking myself a few questions:
- What is a complex field that I have experience in?
- Where would a passion for continuous learning not only be helpful, but vital to succeed?
- What is a field that drives innovation and depends on a creative, analytical mind to thrive?
I had a forehead slap moment… Technology! When I left my inventory job, I chose the wrong ladder. I wasn’t passionate about warehouse management. I was passionate about technology!
Finding Clarity
My path was beginning to clear. Immediately I felt a jolt of excitement. Eureka! I thought, but not yet. IT is a vast, ever-shifting landscape. I had to find a guide.
I decided to deploy another pillar from Ken Coleman: The Proximity Principle. Basically, find someone you know who is doing what you want to do and ask them for guidance.
I reached out to friends and Facebook for a contact in the IT industry and found two: an old family friend, John Ward, an IT consultant with decades of experience, and Beau Button, a friend of a friend and president of a software development company. With their guidance (and months of research) I found my path. I am an Engineer. With a clear path and determination, I set out on the journey I should have started a decade earlier.
The Weight of Starting Over
Setting out sounded great. Actually doing it was another matter. When I finally admitted to myself that I was really going to make this change, the idea of starting over at 41 was terrifying.
I wondered:
- Would employers take me seriously?
- Would I be competing against people half my age with twice as much time left to grow?
- Did I have the energy to do this while raising kids and holding everything together?
If those questions sound familiar, let me reassure you: they’re normal. Everyone who considers a career change later in life asks them. What matters is what you do next.
From Carpenter To Cloud Engineer
I first heard about WGU back in 2010 when I graduated from Delgado Community College in New Orleans. I remember thinking it sounded great, but at the time I didn’t know what I wanted to study. Considering I was a full-time single dad working 2 jobs to get by, a traditional brick and mortar university seemed impractical. And I know I could have earned certifications on my own, but I decided if I was going to do it, I was going to do it right. So at 41 years old, I was going back to college. And WGU was the obvious choice. I became a proud member of the BSCC, Bachelor of Science in Cloud Computing… go Night Owls!
I graduated in 2026. Along the way, I earned certifications, built a Proxmox homelab, and learned that the most valuable lessons often start with something that worked yesterday and doesn’t work today. My degree’s disaster recovery project put that into practice: I built an application with backups to AWS and tested the process of restoring it when the original environment was gone.
Today I support users on the Marine Corps enterprise network. A sign-in or email problem can lead through identity, devices, networking, and services before the cause becomes clear. That experience has made me a more patient troubleshooter and a better listener. It has also made me want to spend more of my time building and improving the systems people depend on.
When I think about the long, hard road I took to get to where I am, I feel a peaceful joy knowing that I have earned my place and that all the struggles have prepared me, taught me, guided me.
Why It’s Not Too Late
One of the myths about career change is that starting later means starting from nothing. That’s not true.
When I began my journey into IT, I brought with me everything I had learned from carpentry, warehousing, and process improvement:
- The discipline to work hard, day after day.
- The problem-solving mindset I sharpened with Lean Six Sigma projects.
- The analytical habits I picked up troubleshooting SQL databases and inventory systems.
At the time, I thought those years were detours. In hindsight, they were training. All of it carried over into IT.
And here’s the part that surprised me: maturity became an asset. I had already failed, already stumbled, already endured tough seasons. That resilience gave me an advantage. While others panicked at setbacks, I treated them as part of the process.
So no, it’s not too late. If anything, life experience adds depth that younger professionals don’t always have yet.
The Hard Truths
I won’t sugarcoat it: changing careers at 40 isn’t easy.
It requires humility: sitting in classes where you’re starting at square one. It requires discipline: studying at night after work, carving out time that you don’t really have. It requires patience, because growth doesn’t happen overnight.
But here’s the thing: hard isn’t the same as impossible.
And hard is often what makes it meaningful. Every exam I passed, every new concept I understood, every milestone I hit felt earned in a way that few things ever had before.
Why I Chose IT (And Why You Can Choose Anything)
For me, IT was the obvious fit once I realized what I was really chasing.
I’ve always loved learning. Back in community college, I remember saying, “I’d be a professional student if I could.” What I didn’t understand then was that IT is one of the few careers where that’s basically the job description. Technology never stops changing. There’s always something new to learn, always another horizon to reach.
That’s why cloud computing felt like home to me. For you, it might be something different. The point isn’t to copy my path. It’s to find your own sweet spot, the field where your talents, passions, and mission overlap. The place where your desire to grow is an advantage, not a liability.
Where I Am Now
At home, my lab includes Linux servers, containers, monitoring, and a three-node Kubernetes cluster. I’m developing projects through IT Odyssey, including a tool that records terminal commands and the surrounding context so it’s easier to answer a question every engineer has asked: What changed?
I’m also working deliberately on confidence with DevOps tools. I don’t want to know a command only because I followed it in a tutorial. I want the muscle memory to build, troubleshoot, automate, and explain the system myself. That means writing scripts, deploying services, documenting what I learn, and going back when something doesn’t make sense.
I’m actively looking for my next role in cloud, DevOps, or platform engineering: a place where I can contribute now, learn from strong engineers, and take on more responsibility as I grow.
A Word of Encouragement
If you’re standing at the edge of a big decision, wondering if you should make the leap into a new field at 40, 45, 50, here’s what I want you to hear:
- You are not starting from scratch. Every skill you’ve picked up, every problem you’ve solved, every failure you’ve endured comes with you.
- It will be hard. But hard isn’t bad. Hard is what makes it count.
- You don’t need to know the whole path right now. Just the next step: take a class, earn a certification, reach out to a mentor.
Don’t let fear of being “too late” be the reason you never try.
The Journey Is the Destination
I went from swinging hammers to configuring networks. From sawdust and sweat to cloud and code. From feeling stuck to building momentum.
And I did it at 41.
So if you’re wondering whether it’s too late for you, let me say it plainly: it’s not.
You still have time to grow, to pivot, to build something new. The horizon is still out there waiting.
This is my Odyssey. The journey is the destination. And yours can be too.