I Didn’t Quit. I Recalibrated.

In 2008, I walked away from engineering and IT.
Not because I couldn’t cut it.
Because it was killing me.

That’s the part people don’t see.
They see someone who left a stable career and assume ego, failure, drama.
But the truth is… my body was already quitting on me before I ever did.

My MS hit like a landslide. First, it stole my ability to walk.
Then it took little pieces of my memory ...
like someone slowly erasing me in soft, quiet strokes.

So when I finally left that world behind…
it wasn’t a meltdown. It was a release.
Like I’d been holding my breath for years
trying to keep it all together
and finally… exhaled.

People talk about "life-altering" moments like they’re lightning bolts.
Mine was more like a heart attack you don’t recover from ...
not physically, not emotionally ...
but one that wakes you up enough to ask:
What would it take for me to actually live?

So I chose something that felt like me.
Or maybe… the version of me that had been buried under deadlines, expectations, and holding on too tight.

I started treating creativity as therapy.
Not just dabbling ... committing.
Moved to Hollywood. Took classes. Took risks.
And realized very quickly…
I didn’t know this world at all.

I had watched it from the sidelines.
I thought I understood it.
But being in it?
Performing, failing, feeling, improvising ...
it cracked me open in ways I didn’t expect.

It didn’t just make me braver.
It made me softer.
Smarter.
More emotionally literate than any spreadsheet or server room ever could.

There’s this moment I think about often.
My cousin was visiting from Saudi, and we were walking down Hollywood Blvd.
A few improv folks waved, some Second City people stopped to chat ...
and I saw their face shift.

That moment of:
“You’re really doing this.”

And yeah… a part of me loved that.
A little smug voice in my head going:
Go tell the family how cool I’ve become.

But behind the pride was something else…
Grief.
That it took a diagnosis for me to finally say yes to the life I wanted.

So now, I live like someone who remembers what it felt like to almost disappear.
And maybe that’s why I create those little bucket lists every year.
Why I chase so many paths.
Why I always seem a bit… all over the place.

Because I know what it costs to wait.

People still ask why I left tech.
Why I gave up “a good job.”
And I still say it plainly:

It was killing me.

That’s when their faces change.
They shift from smug curiosity to awkward concern ...
offering treatments, solutions, well-meaning “have you tried”s.
Their hearts are in the right place.
But I’ve seen what happens when a reason is too real.
It knocks people off the pedestal they built for you…
or for the version of you they thought they understood.

And honestly?
That’s okay.

Because I didn’t quit.
I recalibrated.

And that recalibration didn’t just change my career.
It gave me back my life…
and a version of me I didn’t know I was waiting to meet.