Step One

In which our hero goes back to school

“What are you going to do? Write a book?”

- A typical response when I share I graduated with an MFA in creative writing in my sixties.

“I have no idea. I just wanted to learn the craft of writing.”

- The lie I tell them and myself.

When I grew up in the seventies in the Midwest, it was generally accepted wisdom that by eighteen, you were a functioning adult. It was time to contribute to society and earn a paycheck whether at a factory, a local family business, the farm, or military. Those of us who could afford college and had the grades headed to in-state, land grant universities where the tuition was low and degrees were practical. For men, the default was engineering, business, or agricultural science. My female peers and I were steered towards nursing or teaching, but the real underlying expectation was the completion of an MRS degree.

As much as I absolutely hated my computer science undergrad with its late hours coding in the basement of the Math Science building at Purdue, I knew in my bones this degree was a ticket to a wider world. And it was. After completing an MBA at the University of Illinois in 1983, I joined then Arthur Andersen’s Management Information Consulting Division, which spawned Andersen Consulting, which in turn begat Accenture.My world exploded in ways I could never have predicted based on a degree that didn’t exist five years earlier. Over the decades I navigated the storms and waves of my technology career, family commitments, and world events. The scaffolding of my life was built on output and outcomes, funding retirement, paying off the mortgage, positions on org charts, connections to Important People, a calendar full of meetings, Gerry-rigging childcare with my husband, and the launch of three children into adulthood.

However, in the 2020 quiet of a global pandemic, I realized my checkboxes were all checked: the kids were gone, the mortgage paid off. I could sit on a beach with a cool drink in my hand and read a book. That summer I accepted my last paycheck, turned in my badge and corporate laptop, and faced the empty calendar.

In January 2021, I started taking online workshops in writing, photography, and drawing. Stick by stick, I rekindled creative interests that had smoldered in the corners of an over-scheduled life. I was a raw beginner again, intimidated but determined to learn. As the world re-opened, so did I.

Reading my thesis at graduation, Lesley University, Cambridge, MA, January 2025

Maybe I’ll write a book.

But for now, I’ll start with a newsletter.