I was 52 years old, sitting in a tattoo chair in Forsyth, Georgia, and the only person in the room who wasn’t surprised was the artist holding the machine.

Neurotypical systems weren’t designed to be hostile. They were just designed without you in mind, which turns out to feel exactly the same.

I’ve owned a handful of cars worth remembering and a few I’d rather forget. The one that still follows me around wasn’t the fastest or the prettiest. It just felt like something.

I’ve spent the last several years building things on screens. Somewhere in there, I forgot what it felt like to sit still in the dark and wait for something real.

I’ve worn a lot of labels over the decades: hardware guy, IT veteran, self-taught coder, grandfather. None of them tell the whole story, and some of them are starting to feel like clothes that don’t fit anymore.

The industry spent twenty years building a mythology around who belongs in technology. Most of it was never true, and the parts that were true stopped being true a long time ago.

At 55, I’ve made peace with being a guy who doesn’t fit cleanly into any category the internet has invented for people like me. That peace took longer than it should have.

Most people think about their next tattoo. I’ve started thinking about the whole wall — and that shift changes everything about how you choose what goes on your skin permanently.

Getting tattooed for the first time at 52 wasn’t about rebellion or a midlife crisis. It was about realizing the person I’d been protecting my reputation from never existed.