The Day I Lost Traction and Found My Direction

December 15, 1995.
A Friday morning.
Almost exactly 30 years ago.

I was driving my used ’93 Honda Civic down Route 22 West in New Jersey.
Manual transmission. Manual steering.
My first car. Paid for in cash.

Seventy miles a day to a co-op job as a process engineer at International Flavors and Fragrances.
Decent pay.
No passion.

I was moving fast.
Too fast.

The wheels lost traction on a curve near a bridge.
The car skidded sideways.
Hit hard.
Caught fire.

Traffic stopped for over an hour that morning because of me.

A truck driver pulled in alongside my car, blocking traffic so no one else could hit me.
The car was burning.
I walked away.

Later, back in my dorm room, I curled up in a fetal position.

Fear.
Numbness.
Uncertainty.

And then clarity.

If I had hit that wall at a slightly different angle, I wouldn’t be here.
What shook me just as much was the next thought.

If I survived that moment only to keep driving toward a life I didn’t want, what was the point?

I had chosen my field for the wrong reasons.

Money.
Safety.
Approval.

Meanwhile, the people around me were alive.
My roommate was a computer scientist.
My neighbors were computer engineers.

Technology was everywhere.

And deep down, I already knew the truth.
I had always loved tech.

I’d been bringing technical skills into every job I’d ever had, even when it wasn’t required.

That accident showed me something simple.
My car lost traction.
And so had my life.

Over winter break, I dove into C++.
I immersed myself.
I earned perfect scores in my first class.
I met with advisors and built a real plan.

Within two years, I graduated with my engineering degrees and moved into technology consulting.

Many of my ChemE classmates did the same.
We didn’t know it at the time, but we were stepping directly into the birth of the internet.
The dot-com era.
Massive disruption.
Unimaginable opportunity.

Life was never the same.

And now, here we are again.
Another inflection point.
Another disruption.

AI.

Just like the internet back then, AI is not a trend.
It’s a shift.

People are being disrupted.
Roles are changing.
Certainty is dissolving.

Good.

Because disruption creates awareness.
And awareness creates choice.

You don’t need a car accident to wake up.
You don’t need fear to find traction.
But you do need to pay attention.

The internet changed everything.
AI will too.

The question is simple.
Do you resist it.

Or do you realign, get traction, and move forward on purpose?

~Joseph

P.S. This image was created with AI (Nano Banana). Digital cameras weren’t common in 1995. Seeing this moment visualized has been surprisingly cathartic.