Something Old, Something New

Why reinvention doesn’t always look dramatic

The moment I stopped drifting and started choosing better rooms.

This is what changing direction actually looks like.

The IT manager sitting across from me at the computer club dinner had no idea my 70-something grandfather and I were related.

We’d struck up a conversation about Novell NetWare certifications, local area networks, and the challenge of finding good PC techs who actually understood both hardware and people.

My grandfather sat quietly, occasionally adding a detail about some Unix system from the 1980s or drawing parallels to mainframe architecture from his IBM days.

“You looking for work?” the manager asked me.

I was 22.
Divorced.
Taking night courses at community college while working whatever job paid the bills.

Running with the same crowd I’d been running with since junior high school.
Guys going nowhere, and going there fast.

“Yeah,” I said.
“I’m looking.”

By the next monthly dinner, I had an interview.

Two weeks after that, I was a PC technician.

I’d spend the next ten years at that company, eventually becoming Store Services Manager, managing all of the technology for a small regional grocery store chain.

That dinner conversation changed everything.

But the real turn happened months earlier, the night I walked into that Novell networking certification course.

---

The Wrong Trajectory

I was the first high school student in my city to get permission to use community college credits toward my diploma.

Junior and senior year, I took business, economics, and computer courses at night while my friends were doing whatever teenagers with no direction do.

I wanted more.
I knew I wanted more.

But I wasn’t applying myself.

I was still running with people who treated ambition like a personality flaw.

You know the saying about becoming the average of your five closest friends?
I was living proof.

Nobody asked “what’s next,” just “where we going tonight?”

I got married at 19.
Divorced by 22.

That gutted me.

Not because the marriage was right.
It wasn’t.

But because I didn’t want to become my parents.

They’d had an ugly, prolonged divorce that scarred everyone involved.
I’d promised myself I’d never put kids through that.

Well, we didn’t have kids, but I still failed at the one thing I swore I wouldn’t fail at.

I was taking computer courses, sure.

But I was drifting.
Going through the motions.

Hanging out with people who celebrated mediocrity because it made them feel better about their own lack of movement.

I knew I was capable of more, and I hated how comfortable I’d gotten pretending I wasn’t.

Then my grandfather signed up for the same Novell certification course I did.

---

Clarity Looks Like a 70-Year-Old in a Networking Class

First night of class, I walked in and there he was.

My grandfather.
Sitting in the second row.

70+ years old.
Taking a networking certification course he absolutely did not need.

He’d been my hero since I was five.

I used to follow him around everywhere.
The garage.
The yard.
His workshop.

He had this quiet discipline about him.

He didn’t talk much, but when he did, you listened.

He’d worked on mainframes.
Taught himself Unix.
He never stopped learning.

Seeing him in that classroom was a gut-check.

Here’s a guy in his seventies, still showing up to learn something new.

And I’m in my early twenties, pissing away opportunities because I’m worried about what my friends will think if I actually try.

We took the course together.

Then we joined a local computer club.

We attended meetings together.

He wrote a monthly piece for the club newsletter called “Something Old, Something New.”

He’d describe some technological invention from the 1940s through the 1980s.

Then compare it to whatever cutting-edge tech was being released in the early nineties.

It was his way of showing that innovation isn’t about forgetting the past.

It’s about understanding how the past connects to what’s next.

That philosophy.
Something old, something new.

It became the blueprint for everything that followed.

---

The Dinner That Changed Everything

At one of those computer club dinners, my grandfather and I ended up sitting with an IT manager.

We talked shop.
Novell.
Networking.
PC troubleshooting.

The challenge of finding techs who could actually communicate with non-technical people.

The manager asked if I was looking for work.

I was.

Interview the next month.
Job offer two weeks later.

PC technician.
Supervisor.

Then Store Services Manager, managing all of the technology for a small regional grocery store chain.

Ten years at that company.

Which led to the next move.

Twenty-three years and counting at the company I’m with now.

That dinner didn’t happen by accident.

It happened because I’d made a decision months earlier:
stop running with people who celebrate staying small.

I didn’t blow up my life.

I didn’t quit everything and backpack through Europe.

I didn’t have some dramatic epiphany on a mountaintop.

I just started showing up differently to the opportunities already in front of me.

---

Reinvention Isn’t Always Loud

The narrative around reinvention is almost always exaggerated.

Quit your job.
Sell your stuff.
Start over in Bali.

But that’s not what happened for me.

Reinvention looked like signing up for a certification course.

Joining a computer club.

Sitting at dinners with people who were building things instead of coasting.

Choosing to surround myself with people like my grandfather who believed learning never stops, that age is irrelevant, that the best way to honor the past is to keep moving forward.

I didn’t need to become someone else.

I needed clarity about who I was surrounding myself with and the tenacity to keep showing up even when it felt uncomfortable.

My grandfather didn’t need that Novell cert.

He didn’t need to attend computer club meetings or write newsletter columns comparing 1950s punch cards to 1990s CD-ROMs.

He did it because that’s who he was.

A lifelong learner.

Someone who understood that reinvention isn’t about erasing the past.

It’s about connecting what you’ve learned to what comes next.

Something old. Something new.

---

The Legacy Question

I’m 50-something now, building my own second act while still working full-time.

I think about my grandfather a lot.

About that night he showed up to a networking class he didn’t need.

About those “Something Old, Something New” columns.

About the way he showed me that reinvention doesn’t have an age limit and learning doesn’t have an expiration date.

I’m doing the same thing now.

Trying to take what I’ve learned over 30+ years in tech, operations, and sales and connect it to what comes next.

Writing about clarity, tenacity, reinvention, and legacy.

Building a platform for Gen X professionals who don’t want to start over, but who need to course-correct before it’s too late.

The question I keep asking myself:
Am I honoring the past or running from it?

My grandfather taught me the answer.

You don’t run from the past.

You build on it.

You take something old and connect it to something new.

That’s clarity.
That’s tenacity.
That’s reinvention.

And if you do it right, that’s legacy.

What’s the cost if nothing changes this year?

CTRL: R

---

I’m documenting this work in real time inside CTRL-ALT-REINVENT.
The thinking, the friction, and what actually holds up in real life.
→ CTRL-ALT-REINVENT on Skool

---

CTRL Signals by JP Bristol
Clarity. Tenacity. Reinvention. Legacy.

*Image created with Google Image FX