When a Shortened Future Becomes a Longer Journey

From fatherless beginnings to a working-class childhood, from scraping through college to four decades in high tech, and finally to a new life in Texas — each chapter taught me how to navigate change. Now I help others do the same.

I usually start this story in the middle because the beginning is hard to explain, and for most of my life I didn’t understand it myself. But if you really want to know who I am and why I see the world the way I do, you have to go back to something I don’t remember — only lived the consequences of.

My father died when I was ten months old. At that age, you don’t form memories, just wiring. The world rearranges itself and you don’t have the language to explain what shifted. You simply grow up with an empty space where something important was supposed to be.

My mother was born in 1920 and came out of the Depression with the emotional vocabulary of that generation — meaning she didn’t talk much about feelings. She worked, she provided, she managed three kids alone. Grief wasn’t discussed. Loss wasn’t examined. Life moved forward whether you understood it or not. And while I never blamed her for that silence, it had consequences.

Because when no one explains why your father is gone, you create your own explanation. Mine was simple, and completely wrong, but it lived inside me for decades:

“Men in my family die young. I probably will too.”

I never said it out loud. I didn’t even know I believed it. But it shaped everything — my urgency, my seriousness, my drive, and the way I approached life as something that might not last long.

I wasn’t a gifted student. I worked my way through Northeastern University one job at a time. I didn’t have a safety net, so I became my own. High-tech became a natural fit — an industry where clarity, competence, and results mattered more than pedigree. I spent forty years selling complex technology to people who didn’t have time for nonsense. I understood them. I didn’t have time for nonsense either.

But the real turning point in my life wasn’t a promotion or a big sale. It was a birthday.

My father died at forty.
The day I turned forty, I remember thinking quietly:
I’m still here.

It hit me harder than I expected. I had no internal roadmap for life after 40 because I never saw a father live that life. When I crossed that invisible threshold, everything opened up — not suddenly, but steadily. For the first time, I wasn’t racing the clock. I could think long-term. I could breathe a bit.

Not long after, I met the woman who became my wife. I got married at 43 — which, when you’ve lived assuming you might not get that far, feels like a very fortunate turn in the story. We built a family and a life. And after decades in Silicon Valley, we did what countless families eventually do: we realized the place no longer made sense. The cost of living was punishing ordinary people. The politics drifted. The day-to-day experience deteriorated. Good families were being priced out of their own communities.

So in 2021, we left for the Texas Hill Country.
We should have done it earlier.
Nearly everyone says that after they move here.

People sometimes ask why I left a successful career in high tech to become a real estate agent in my sixties. The truth is fairly simple: I didn’t want another career. I wanted to do something meaningful with the years I had earned — the years I once didn’t think I’d ever see. Helping people relocate, especially people leaving the same pressures I left behind, felt like the right use of my experience.

I know what it’s like to start over.
I know what it’s like to be unmoored.
I know what it’s like to live with uncertainty.
And I know what it takes to rebuild.

I don’t sugarcoat things. I never have. That’s not branding; that’s survival. When you grow up without a buffer, you learn to respect the truth — even when it’s uncomfortable. So when I talk about the Texas Hill Country, or affordability, or the reality of moving from California to Texas, or the choices families face today, I’m direct. It’s the only way I know how to communicate.

I work with people who feel worn down by places that lost their way. People priced out of their own neighborhoods. People searching for stability, rationality, and a future they can actually build. I also work with real estate agents in high-cost states who need a referral partner they can trust with their clients. And more and more, I write about the pressures shaping our communities because someone needs to.

Texas isn’t perfect. No place is. But the Hill Country offers something rare in today’s world: room to breathe, room to think, and room to build a life without being taxed or regulated into exhaustion. When you’ve lived the opposite — as I have — you recognize the value immediately.

My life has had two halves:
The first shaped by the belief that I wouldn’t live long.
The second defined by the realization that I might live long enough to build something meaningful.

Everything I do now — the writing, the analysis, the community engagement, the real estate work — comes from the same place: wanting to give people clarity and direction, the very things I didn’t have growing up.

If my story resonates with you, it’s probably because you value the same things — honesty, resilience, history, and a belief that life can still get better with the right choices.

I’m not here to sell anyone on Texas.
I’m here to tell the truth about it.
And if we ever talk about your move, you’ll get the same version of me you’re getting right now — unpolished, straightforward, and sincere about the future you’re trying to build.