I Thought I Was Building a Career

*A layoff after fifteen years in aerospace ended a chapter. This is the story of everything that quietly came before it.*

A few weeks ago, I shared that I’d been laid off after more than nine years with RTX, most recently at Collins Aerospace. That post was written in the emotion of the moment. This one is different.

I’ve had time to reflect, and I’ve realized the layoff wasn’t the story. It was the end of a chapter. The more interesting story is everything that came before it, because looking back over fifteen years, one thing is clear: I thought I was building a career. I was quietly building a life.

The semester that changed everything

Most people I worked with know the broad resume. Pratt & Whitney. Flight test. International assignments. Collins. Program management. Very few know how it started.

Years before I stepped into Pratt & Whitney, I dropped out of college. When I went back in my mid-twenties, transferring from Tunxis Community College to Central Connecticut State, I noticed something about how transfer GPAs worked: my credits transferred, my GPA didn’t. Which meant I had exactly one semester to reinvent how employers would see me.

I treated that semester like a full-time job and finished with a 4.0. That one decision opened doors that I don’t believe would have opened otherwise. Internship offers followed, including General Dynamics, and then a co-op with Pratt & Whitney while I finished my engineering degree.

After graduation, I was accepted into Pratt’s Manufacturing Development Program, a rotational leadership track many engineers saw as a fast lane through the company. Then it was canceled. Layoffs. The entire cohort disappeared before it began, and I went from having my career mapped out to accepting an outsourced contractor position.

At the time it felt like failure. It was a detour. Eventually I earned a direct position, became run-qualified as a jet engine test engineer, and said yes to every opportunity that came after. Funny thing about that first cancellation: it should have taught me early that no plan owned by someone else is safe. It took me another decade to fully learn it.

The assignments that rewired me

When international assignments opened up, I applied. Not to see the world. I thought they’d help my career.

Brazil. Japan. Russia. Each one taught me far more than aerospace. How to navigate unfamiliar cultures, work across languages and time zones, and solve problems in places where nothing felt familiar. How to be comfortable being uncomfortable. And underneath all of it, the unglamorous mechanics: how visas work, how international banking works, how taxes get complicated the moment you cross a border, how differently other countries treat work, family, and time.

I thought I was collecting experiences that would make me a better engineer. I was collecting the exact skills my family would need a decade later.

The part almost nobody at work knew

Outside the office, I was building something else, and I kept the two worlds deliberately separate.

While I managed aerospace programs by day, my nights and weekends went to international finance, relocation planning, tax strategy, visas, remote work, and content creation. I started by answering friends’ questions about moving abroad. The conversations became videos. The videos became a community. The community became a business. Today more than 40,000 people follow that journey across social media.

Most of my coworkers had no idea. Not because I was hiding it, but because I wanted my work judged on the work. And to be clear about a question I’ve been asked: no, the company didn’t know I was planning a life abroad. To be fair, I was also genuinely invested. I loved the work, learned from incredibly talented people, and had mentors and leaders who changed the course of my life. I’ll always be grateful for that.

But the plan was real, and it predates the layoff by years. I had requested to work remotely from Costa Rica; it was denied for lack of work authorization, which was the right call. I researched Panama’s remote worker visa and legal ways to spend time abroad while staying with the company. The move wasn’t born from losing my job. The layoff simply accelerated something already in motion.

What changed, and what I kept

In my late twenties and early thirties, every promotion was a mountain I wanted to climb. Run-qualified. Flight test. Leading programs. I was ambitious and I wanted to prove myself, and those milestones still matter to me.

Somewhere along the way, though, I realized the version of me that existed at work wasn’t the complete version. I’d learned to present to executives and manage multimillion-dollar programs, and those are real skills. But I’ve always been a free thinker, someone who questions assumptions and imagines different ways to live. Sometimes that fit neatly inside corporate life. Sometimes it didn’t. That’s not a criticism of corporate America; every organization has expectations, and those years made me a better communicator and a better leader.

Here’s the irony I’ve come to appreciate: aerospace didn’t just give me a career. It gave me everything I’m using now. Project management. Problem solving. Leading through uncertainty. Communicating across cultures. Adapting fast when the plan changes. None of that disappeared with my badge. It’s worth more to me today than it’s ever been.

The next chapter

My family and I are now making the move abroad we spent years planning. The destination changed. The timeline accelerated. The mission didn’t.

Many of you have only known me as the engineer, the flight test lead, or the program manager. I’m proud of every one of those chapters. They just weren’t the whole story.

In the coming weeks I’ll share more about what comes next. Not because I think everyone should leave corporate America or move overseas. Careers evolve, priorities change, and sometimes the path you thought you were building quietly prepares you for one you never imagined.

If you want to follow along, I’ll keep sharing the journey here. For the day-to-day reality of building a location-independent life abroad, you can find me on YouTube and TikTok at BrightShadow2K.

To everyone I worked with over the last fifteen years: thank you. You were part of a journey that prepared me for far more than I realized.

~Mr. Shadow

brightshadow2k.com (http://brightshadow2k.com)

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