Reinventing Yourself After 50 (and Again After 64) with Janet Roberts

What do you do when a cancer diagnosis, a failing relationship, and a decade of feeling like you're heading in the wrong direction all collide at once? For Janet Roberts, it became the beginning of not one, but two, complete career reinventions.Janet Roberts is a former global leader in cybersecurity education and an award-winning novelist. At 39, facing a cancer diagnosis with even odds of survival, she wrote down her dream of publishing a novel and pinned it to her fridge. Years later, she built a pioneering career in cybersecurity education from scratch, becoming one of the first five people in the world doing that work with a communications background. After 16 years, she retired to finally write full-time, publishing four novels and a memoir, including the award-winning What Lies We Keep and her latest release, Wired For Magic.In this episode, Janet shares how a cancer diagnosis in her late thirties reshaped her sense of what was possible, what it took to build an entirely new career in cybersecurity with no prior experience, and why she believes reinvention doesn't stop after 50, or even 64. She also opens up about what she wishes she'd known earlier, and how grief and loss became catalysts for redirecting her life.WHAT WE TALKED ABOUT:Writing her dream of publishing a novel on a piece of paper before chemoBuilding a career in cybersecurity education from zero experienceReinventing her life again in retirement to write full-timeWhat grief and near-fatal illness taught her about redirecting a lifeAdvice for pursuing a career you're not "100% qualified" forIndependently publishing fiction through her own imprint, Porch Swing PublishingCONNECT WITH JANET ROBERTS:Website: booksbyjanetroberts.comSubstack: "Let's start with coffee..."