tingrides.life

Life after 47 —
the mess, the magic, and the design of a life that fits.

Selected Stories

BLOG 1

One Hard Truth Made Me Leave the Career I Spent 15 Years Building

Hi, I’m Ting — I left a 15-year engineering career to rebuild my life from the inside out. This is the moment that cracked everything open. 👇
BLOG 8

What Will I Regret If I Don’t Try Now?

Between me and my parents, there’s a quiet space I chose to stay in. Bronnie Ware, an Australian palliative care nurse, spent years listening to people nearing death. 👇
BLOG 23

Turning Down Easy Money: Staying True to My Priorities

I almost said yes to a comfortable pay-check. My chest said no.👇

About me

I’m Ting. At 47, I closed a 15-year chapter as a stormwater engineer and stepped into a new experiment:
What happens when you stop living by other people’s scripts and start following your own curiosity instead?

This isn’t a polished success story. It’s a lab.
I share experiments in movement, reinvention, and building a life that fits — honest notes from someone rebuilding in real time.

In my 20s, I cycled around the world on a shoestring and wrote books about it.
In my 30s and 40s, I engineered solutions to floods in New Zealand and Australia, expanded my work into the USA in recent years.
Now, back in Taiwan, I run small labs — from ballet and unicycling to daily writing and reflection practices — ways of shifting old patterns, reconnecting with my body, and finding courage to choose a life that feels like mine.

I grew up in Taiwan, spent two decades in New Zealand and Australia, and returned home in midlife. That full circle reshaped how I see roots, identity, and what freedom really means.

If you’ve ever hit that “Is this it?” moment — the tension between inherited roles and unspoken dreams, the weight of certainty that never felt truly yours — you’ll probably feel at home here.

What I’m Working On

Creating a Life That Fits

After years of engineering systems and solving floods, I’m now applying the same design mindset to life itself: testing what feels aligned, honest, and grounded in what matters. Not a grand blueprint — more like small prototypes, adjusted in real time.

Writing a Book

I’m gathering stories from the messy middle of midlife — the truth of what happens after you quit at 47 without a neat plan. It’s a slow project by design: a book shaped through lived experiments, not tidy conclusions.

Exploring Movement

From handstands to unicycling to ballet, I use movement as a lab: to notice how my body stores stories, and how practice rewires old patterns. These aren’t just skills — they’re metaphors for freedom and aliveness.

Belief Experiments

I’m stress-testing the quiet scripts I inherited about productivity, worth, relationships, and money. Each experiment is a way to ask: What if this belief isn’t true? What opens up if I stop following it?

Training with My Mum

At 72, my mum is lifting weights for the first time. We’re building more than muscle — we’re building trust, connection, and a new story of aging. For me, it’s one of the clearest reminders that reinvention has no age limit.

Contact

Got a question, idea, or just want to say hi?
I’d love to hear from you.

Whether it’s about collaboration, movement, writing, or anything this site stirred up — drop me a message and I’ll get back to you soon.