Meet Linda Metzler

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Linda Metzler. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Linda below.

Linda, thanks so much for taking the time to share your insights and lessons with us today. We’re particularly interested in hearing about how you became such a resilient person. Where do you get your resilience from?

If I reach way back, I would say the seed of my resilience started from the marriage of stubborness and necessity.

You see, I got pregnant at 17. In that situation, no choice is an easy choice. I chose to welcome a baby into my life and to marry the baby’s father when I was 18. It’s good to make big decisions at 18 while you still know everything!

I felt the eyes of the world on me then. While I’m certain my loved ones were behind me, the truth is statistics had already prophesized failure. The odds of a marriage of teenagers lasting is very low. Often a young mother is left to her own devices to support and care for her child.

I was determined not to fail in the eyes of my family nor in the eyes of society at large, although I felt their judgmental looks quite regularly. But I was young, with a high school education (and the hourly wage that matched that), and it made me scrappy. Resilient.

I worked hard. I leaned on loved ones to help with childcare. My two daughters (yes, two) and I ate peanut butter and jelly quite often. Banquet Pot Pies were $0.25 back then – we had a lot of those.

That seed, watered by the desire to support my family, grew freely. It grew strong. Eventually, it became a mighty oak. That resilience carried me through continuing to support my family (eventually a 2nd husband and three more daughters) through infidelity and divorces and blended family issues and more.

What I learned is resilience is not a choice. It’s also not a steady state. It ebbs and flows. I can recall spending two months in bed when my 2nd marriage imploded. That didn’t feel like resilience, but I knew I’d bounce back. Sometimes, that spirit shows up in my writing.

Stand Up

So you’re stuck all in your head
And you can’t get out of bed
You have no job, your marriage failed
The train that is your life derailed

Yep, it’s a mess. What’d you expect?
To coast through life and not get wrecked?
Kick and scream, go on and cry
Let it out. Detoxify.

Now get yourself up out of bed
Make a plan, girl, use your head
Shake off the past and carry on
You can’t sprint through a marathon

Take one step and then one more
The world is right outside your door
Learn from what went wrong and then
Regroup, adjust, and start again

So stand up strong despite past falls
Swing hard at all of life’s curve balls
Cause, girl, your story isn’t done
A brand new chapter’s just begun

Thanks for sharing that. So, before we get any further into our conversation, can you tell our readers a bit about yourself and what you’re working on?

I started my professional career at the age of 20, with only KFC and Payless Shoes experience behind me. No experience, no degree. I lucked into a role at a very small company focused on technology. This was the 80s so technology in the home was relatively new. At a small company, you wear ALL THE HATS, so it was a learning bed for me. Forty years later, those lessons are still important.

I parlayed that experience into a very long career in Technology Procurement. I currently hold the title of Senior Vice President at a company that provides IT solutions to thousands of clients, from data center colocation to hosted private clouds and everything in between. This is where I spend most of my waking hours, and it’s a job that I love, but it’s not all I am or all I do.

From the time I was six years old, I’ve wanted to be a writer. I started submitting my writing while in my 20s and occasionally saw my work published. When blogs became popular, I wrote one of those. Even at work, I used my talent for writing as part of my brand.

I’m sixty years old, and won’t work a corporate gig forever. While I’m interested in stepping out of ‘the grind’, I’m not terribly interested in retiring, so right now, I am building my plan for the next chapter. Writing and speaking will feature prominently – a passion project that creates some discretionary income to feed my travel fun.

I wish to use my voice to illuminate the human experience with honesty, humor, and heart—helping others feel seen, less alone, and more empowered to embrace their own complexity. Through storytelling, speaking, and writing, I plan to draw from a life of resilience, reinvention, and deep feeling to create spaces where truth is safe, laughter is healing, and vulnerability becomes a kind of strength. My purpose is to connect what’s hard to say with what’s deeply felt, and in doing so, offer others the kind of understanding I have always longed for myself.

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Asking WHY about why something is done a certain way, being open to evaluating new ways. An ongoing attitude of curiosity and innovation is always a good thing. Early in your career, you may submit many good ideas that are not adopted, but don’t let this discourage you. Eventually you’ll become known as a creative innovator and as your career grows, so will the adoption rate of your ideas.

If you are going corporate, learn Excel. You don’t need to be a Jedi Master, but every department in every company deals with DATA. Some functions, such as Accounting, require data analysis skills. But so does IT and HR and Operations and any other department you can name. While there are specific systems that are purpose-built for data analystics and reporting, the truth is – the outcomes always start in Excel. It is the quiet backbone if the fancier outcomes, and if you understand and master it, you are in a good position for growth. Don’t take my word for it – go ask anyone in corporate this question: “Who is the indispensible person in your team regarding data and why?” They will tell you that Lisa is an expert in Excel, or Brad is a wizard. Everyone on the team is dependent upon and in awe of that person. Be that person.

Say yes to new opportunities, even if they are outside the scope of the job. This may be an unpopular opinion in the Gen Z ranks, but I’ve seen it open doors again and again. Yes, it’s taking on work that you are not, perhaps, currently compensated for, but it gives you a chance to showcase your skills in a way that earns you the growth that you seek. Some of my biggest learning sprints have been because a project was given to me that scared the daylights out of me. I wasn’t sure I could do it – but my boss felt I could. I said yes and learned and grew each time. Those experiences led to title and pay growth over time.

One more – don’t be afraid to zig-zag. Career progression isn’t always serial growth. Twice, I took a big step back in title and compensation. Both of those decisions were the right decisions – proven out by hindsight. Both of those steps back allowed me to earn multiple steps forward.

Before we go, maybe you can tell us a bit about your parents and what you feel was the most impactful thing they did for you?

When my first marriage failed, I was only 21 years old, with two young children. My husband and I had one car, and he took that car when he moved out. I had a job, but no car to get to it and no money with which to buy one.

My mother was still working at that time, but she took me on. Every morning, Monday through Friday, she came to where I lived and picked up my two little ones and me, drove to my sitter’s house so I could drop the kids off, took me to my place of work, and then went to her own job. At the end of each day, she did the opposite. She did that for a year while I saved up enough to buy a little used car.

What she did was much more than what appears on the surface. Yes, she helped solve a practical problem of transportation, but she also modeled how parents show up for their children well beyond the rearing years. My mother has always been there when I needed her. She didn’t buy me a car, she took the more difficult road of providing for my ability to buy my own car.

Where parenting is concerned, my mother has perfect attendance.

Contact Info:

• Website: http://justlinda.com/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lindaannmetzler/
• Twitter: https://x.com/LindaInDisguise