I used to think the title engineer mattered more than anything.
That probably makes sense if you knew me growing up. I wasn’t a great student. C’s and D’s. Curious, but not disciplined. I learned by touching things, breaking them, and figuring out how to put them back together.
I was a curious child, starting with vacuums. There’s a photo of me at three years old standing nearby while my dad puts one together. I don’t remember it — I couldn’t — but the focus is unmistakable. I’m watching closely as the parts go together.
That curiosity shows up later, in ways I do remember. I took apart the VCR when it stopped working and usually got it running again. I messed with light switches to understand how the circuit worked and popped breakers doing it. I ran phone lines through the house and connected them back to the pole outside. Looking back, I honestly don’t know why my parents let me do half of that — but they did.
None of that translated well to school.
My teenage years were restless. I got into trouble. I was monitored. Not because anyone was trying to control me, but because I didn’t yet know how to direct myself. Freedom, for me, didn’t come from pushing limits harder — it came later, when I moved out and was finally on my own.
That’s when things started to settle.
I spent a lot of time at the family computer in the 90s. Hours at a time. Teaching myself things. Figuring out systems. Breaking things and fixing them again. I didn’t have a plan. I just knew this made sense to me in a way most other things didn’t.
As the world shifted toward technology, that curiosity finally had a place.
I taught myself what I needed to know. At first just to survive. Then to be useful. Eventually, the title showed up.
Engineer.
Later, architect.
I remember laughing with a friend who became an engineer through a very traditional path. Same title. Very different routes. And the laughter wasn’t confidence — it was disbelief. Mostly at myself. I didn’t feel like I had earned it yet, at least not in the way I thought earning was supposed to work.
When I finally had the title, I expected something to change.
It didn’t.
What it felt like was relief. The plan worked. The effort added up. I had crossed a line I’d been running toward for years. That mattered to me more than I realized at the time.
And then the quieter question followed:
Is this it?
The answer wasn’t no. But it wasn’t the whole thing either.
What surprised me was the discomfort that came with that realization. For a long time, the title had been doing real work for me. It gave me a way to explain myself — not just to other people, but to myself. Letting go of how much it mattered raised a quieter, more unsettling question underneath it: if I wasn’t proving anything anymore, then who was I without it?
I noticed that some people respond to that feeling by trying to outrun it — buying something dramatic, reinventing themselves overnight, making noise so they don’t have to sit with the question. I didn’t do that. I stayed put long enough to see what was underneath it.
I sometimes stop and really take in where I am — that I live along Lake Michigan, that the city is outside my window at night, that the space around me is calm, intentional, and mine. Not as something to show off, but as something I never imagined would actually be me.
This was the dream.
I just didn’t know how to articulate it back then.
I didn’t set out to impress anyone. I set out to understand things, to be competent, to be steady. Somewhere along the way, that turned into a life that feels grounded and beautiful in a way I never expected.
That’s when the pattern finally became obvious.
The titles weren’t the point. They were scaffolding. Everything before them — the restlessness, the doubt, the self-teaching, the mistakes — wasn’t wasted time. It was material.
I wasn’t behind.
I was being built.
Now, I know when something needs to be said.
I know when keeping the peace isn’t the right move.
I know when responsibility is mine — not because of a title, but because I can see the whole system.
And outside of work, the titles fall away completely.
With the people who love me, I don’t need proof. I don’t need credentials. I get to just be — and be wanted — without earning it.
That’s the shift.
Not from ambition to indifference.
But from chasing identity to recognizing it.
The title mattered. It had to. I needed it. I needed something solid to believe in while I was building myself, and I couldn’t have skipped that step without losing my footing.
But it was never who I was.
It was the thing I believed in long enough to build a life that finally feels like mine.